John D. Madden
Assistant Professor
Office:
(604) 827-5306
Lab: (604) 822-6267
Lab Page: http://mm.ece.ubc.ca
Fax:
(604) 822-5949
Laboratory:
Room 341
Advanced Materials and Process Engineering
Laboratory, Brimacombe
Building
2355
East Mall,
Email:
jmadden ece . ubc . ca
Background:
B.Sc.
Honours Physics, UBC (1991); M.Eng. Biomedical
Engineering, McGill (1995).
Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (2000).
Post-doctoral Associate, MIT BioInstrumentation Laboratory,
(2000-2001).
Research Scientist, MIT BioInstrumentation Laboratory
(2001-2002).
Chief Scientist and Founder, Molecular Mechanisms LLC (2001-2003).
RESEARCH | TEACHING
| PUBLICATIONS | COLLABORATORS
Research Interests
Theme: Synthesis, fabrication, characterization and modeling of novel materials
designed from the molecular scale to optimize electrical, mechanical, chemical, and
optical responses.
Molecular Actuators: Molecular scale dimensional changes are employed to
create materials with muscle-like properties. Electrochemically-driven conducting
polymers
and carbon nanotube yarns are
being characterized and applied in medical
devices and consumer products. Current actuators generate up to
100 x more force than mammalian skeletal muscle
for a given cross-section, and three
times the power to mass. Work is aimed at increasing strain and strain
rate, and
understanding underlying physical mechanisms.
High Power Capacitors: Conducting polymers, including polypyrrole, feature
capacitances of over 100 Farads per gram ( ~ 100 F/ml ). The primary disadvantage
of these capacitors is their slow discharge time (> 1s). Measurement and modeling of
the rate-limiting mechanisms suggests that discharge rates can be increased >1000
fold, enabling power delivery in excess of 1 MW/kg. This is being achieved in part
via polymer nanostructuring.
Organic Electronics: We are fabricating transistors that employ organic semiconductors
in order to help create low cost printable electronics. Recent breakthroughs include the
demonstration of low voltage transistors (< 5 V) using a new organic transistor architecture,
and the demonstration of methods to enhance the characteristics of standard organic field effect
transistor (OFET) designs.
All-Organic Devices: A key long term aim is to develop all organic
devices.
The diversity of electrical, mechanical, optical, chemical and biochemical behaviours of
conducting polymers, and their low cost, makes them ideal materials for fabricating
such artificial ‘organisms’.
Please visit the laboratory web page for further information and publications.
Teaching
EECE 580 Emerging Electronic Materials and Devices.
EECE 352 Electrical Engineering Materials and Devices.
Publications
Papers, patents, reports and theses.
Molecular Mechatronics Lab
For further
information on research activities please visit http://mm.ece.ubc.ca
.
Last Updated: October 2006.