The trend toward smaller and faster electronic devices is placing high demands on the science of fabricating novel structures at the nanoscale.  It is thus highly advantageous for undergraduate physics students to be trained in hands-on research with instrumentation capable of manipulating and studying matter at this scale.

In the Bradley University Physics Department we have established, through a combination of internal investments and external research grants awarded from the National Science Foundation and the Research Corporation, a materials physics research center.  As the Bradley Physics Department is an exclusively undergraduate student department, one of the purposes of this research center is to involve undergraduates, as early as possible in their academic careers, in scientific studies of the physics of materials with at least one dimension at the nano level.

In this presentation I will describe our research program and the newly acquired instrumentation in our department, and describe some of the research problems that we and our students are currently tackling, including some of my recent work on self-assembly of silver nanowires on silicon surfaces.

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