NanoBlog

The 2013 Nano & Micro Manufacturing workshop proceedings are now available open source. Save the "All Proceedings PDF" link to a file for best results. The PDF contains all the talks and is 622 pages long. The workshop focused on how to commercialized nano and micro technologies with speakers from industry and academia.

Researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute have made some silicon waveguide resonators that allow light to propagate in just the edge states of the material with low loss when the wavelength of light incident is an integer multiple of the resonators circumference. When the resonators are arranged in an array, light of only the resonant frequency can propagate between resonators. The structures can be used in quantum computing, optical delay lines, optical switches, and optical filters. The system confines light in two dimensions and allows researchers to build hybrid electron-photon-atomic systems.

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is working on graphene measurement, characterization, and standards. The NPL is the UK equivalent of NIST in the USA and is working on the following research areas for graphene (2D materials):

• Electrical properties
• Chemical characterization
• Structural characterization
• Barrier and packaging
• Functional chemistry

Oxford Instruments is hosting the Leading Techniques for the Nano-scale Etching and Deep Etching of Silicon webinar on Oct 31, 2012 at 11:30 AM EDT.

Bluestone Global Group is offering a Grat-FET: Graphene Field-Effect Transistors. It's actually an array of 64 graphene FETs on a doped Si wafer, a 300 nm SiO₂ dielectric, a 2000 cm²/Vs mobility. The channel length isn't specified but is estimated at about 5 um.

Rice University is offering the Nanotechnology: The Basics course on Coursera starting October 21, 2013. The course is 4 weeks long and indicates that 4-8 hours of work is require per week. An outline of the course by week includes:

• Week 1: Introduction to nanotechnology
• Week 2: Electronics in supper small materials
• Week 3: Magnetism at the nanoscale
• Week 4: Nanoscale photonics

CNN has posted the article Graphene: 'Miracle material' will be in your home sooner than you think and it contains a short and interesting interview with Andre Geim. The interviews give some more insight on how the scotch tape exfoliation technique came about.

The 2012-2013 Cornell NanoScale Science & Technology Facility Research Accomplishments is now available. It's a report about all the research accomplishments that were produced at the CNF. Topics include:

• Biological applications
• Chemistry
• Electronics
• Materials
• Mechanical
• Optical and Opto-electronics
• Physics and Nanostructure physics
• Process and Characterization

The Modeling and Simulation of Metamaterial-Based Devices for Industrial Applications is now on archive. It's well done and covers some neat examples like building a metamaterial ground plane in you PCB to reduce noise, a low profile antennas, and a metamaterial waveguide.

The physicists’ guide to putting your scanning probe microscope into a dilution refrigerator webinar is now on archive. Vladimir Shvarts from Janis describes how to put a SPM into a dilution refrigerator for vertical and horizontal configurations. He also recommends the following books as references for working at mK temperature ranges.

• Matter and Methods at Low Temperature by Frank Pobell
• The Art of Cryogenics: Low-Temperature Experimental Techniques by Guglielmo Ventura and Lara Risegari