The Nanooptics Group of CIC nanoGUNE is involved in the Work Package 8: Photonics and Optoelectronics in the Graphene Flagship Core 3 project, the fourth funding cycle of the €1 Billion research initiative funded by the European Commission. The mission of Work Package Photonics and Optoelectronics is to develop GRM-based components for photonic and optoelectronic applications and to integrate them into photonic circuits, imaging arrays and optical sensors. NanoGUNE works on infrared sensing and is involved in infrared and terahertz detectors.

The nanomaterials group in nanoGUNE, led by Mato Knez, has developed a new technology called SCIP that allows an improvement of the mechanical properties of polymers. The technology can be directly applied to functionalize textile, opening new perspectives in product development in the sports/fashion or personal protection sector.

A team of researchers from Université Grenoble Alpes - CNRS - Spintec, Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS-Thales, and Université d'Evry, and also including Dr. Diogo. C Vaz, currently at CIC nanoGUNE, reports on an alternative strategy to achieve low-power spin detection in a non-magnetic system. The results have now been published in Nature.

CIC nanoGUNE has launched the 2020 Master Scholarships Call to provide master students in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Materials Science, and Nanoscience the opportunity to develop their Master Thesis in the areas of magnetism, optics, materials, and bioengineering, all the the nanoscale.

The Basque nanoscience research center CIC nanoGUNE and the multinational company Intel, the world’s largest manufacturer of integrated circuits, have been working hard in the last one and a half years in a disruptive technology for the electronics of the future: MESO technology. This technology integrates logic and memory in the same circuit and for this it needs to read and write the information stored in magnetic bits. We need the two functions to operate at the same voltage for the circuit to work. In the last work, recently published in Nature Electronics, the team has achieved to increase by 10,000 times the output voltage for the “reading” operation.

The technology and cooperative research centers integrated in the Basque Research and Technology Alliance - BRTA alliance are involved in various scientific and technological initiatives with the aim of reducing the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 emergency.

Juan Manuel Gomez, Pre-doctoral Researcher at the Nanodevices group at nanoGUNE, received his PhD at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) after the defense of his thesis project at the beginning of 2020. His research work, entitled “Spin-transport in magnetic insulator/heavy metal heterostructures" has been developed under the supervision of Felix Casanova, Ikerbasque Research Professor and group co-leader at the nanoGUNE's Nanodevices group. 

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a technique used to deposit very thin layers of material in coatings to improve a given physical property or the mechanical properties of a material. This technology is very versatile and useful, but it has been found that the design of chambers for ALD processes, generally oriented to 2D substrates, e.g. silicon wafers as used in microelectronics, does not allow the deposition on complex shaped substrates that may have large sizes or non-geometric shapes (e.g. implants, fibers, and metallurgical parts).

CIC nanoGUNE —the Basque nanoscience research centre—, BerriUP —a startup accelerator in Donostia— and Graphenea —nanoGUNE’s first startup devoted to the production and marketing of graphene— have signed a collaboration agreement to drive forward proposals relating to research into graphene. So for the first time they are launching the Global Graphene Call designed to develop business ideas linked to graphene.

The winter school was held in San Sebastian from 12 to 14 February.