From basic research to industrial partnership

MINANO

Micro Instrumentation, NANOsciences & waves (MINANO)

Research themes

MINANO is a pluridisciplinary research team involved in the field of micro- and nanoscience. The team is itself split into three research groups, each group covering very-well focused research activities while benefiting from complementary know-how allowing for strong interactions.

In the long run, the point of convergence of the three research topics within MINANO lies in the understanding of physical phenomena at the nano- scale through the developement of fundamental tools allowing to fabricate, characterize and investigate nano-objects properties. For instance, in the specific frame of phononic crystals where operation at high frequency is particularly relevant, heading towards micron-sized structures is almost inescapable. This basically means that a proper characterization of such devices will require, e.g., very high frequency vibrometers that will in themselves constitute a significant evolution in the field of micro-instrumentation. Shrinking the phononic crystal dimensions will also call for new fabrication methods. An extreme case could be the realization of 3D phononic structures at several GigaHertz, exhibiting such a small lattice parameter that their fabrication could only be achieved through groundbreaking techniques involving supramolecular self-organization. Again, the development of innovative microscopy methods would be absolutely crucial for the characterization of these structures.

The MINANO research group is headed by Vincent Laude.

Groups

Micro-Instrumentation

The Micro-Instrumentation group devotes most of its activities to the development of high resolution instrumentation systems, such as near-field microscopes, CCD thermographic systems, vibrometers, micro-antennas, microthermocouples, etc., aiming at the characterization of microsystem devices. The group also focuses on the modeling of the physical effects, in particular of the interaction phenomena, occurring at a sub-micron scale.
Further details on the group activities can be found here.

Nanosciences

The NANosciences group is a multidisciplinary research team involving chemists as well as physicists, theoreticians and experimentalists, aiming at putting together their complementary skills and know-how to develop nano-devices.
The group's current interests partly lie in supramolecular self-assembly. For examples, nanowires made of bipolar molecules have been successfully deposited and organized on preliminary structured semiconductor substrates.
The Nanoscience group is also involved in the design and fabrication of high performance fuel cell cores made of functionalized nanoporous silicon.
Further details on the group activities can be found here.

Phononic crystals

The phononic crystal group is interested in the properties of propagating elastic or acoustic waves (acoustical phonons) in periodical media. Within the frame of a collaborative work involving other groups at FEMTO-ST, it also devotes part of its research effort to investigate interactions between phonons and electromagnetic waves (photons and plasmons).
Further details on the group activities can be found here.

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