Over the last six months, MCN staff have embarked on a mission to overhaul systems to make MCN a more efficient, organised and methodical workplace by undertaking a Lean training and business improvement program.

The program looks at optimising the processes and systems already in place to make them more efficient and simple for all employees and users to follow. This is especially important at MCN as many processes must be followed by a wide range of staff, visitors and users, with a range of experience levels.

All MCN technical staff are now accredited under the Lean program and have implemented a 5S program -  sort, set in order, shine, standardize, sustain – to provide a system of reliability and accountability in all facets of MCN’s day-to-day activities. This is an industry standard that provides a structured, productive and clean working environment and includes the implementation of cleaning rosters, labelling systems to ensure shared items are kept in the right place, removal of unnecessary items in shared spaces, systems for stock replenishment, as well as instrument care and maintenance.

Many users will have noticed the signs of the 5S program around the MCN building in the labs, cleanrooms and shared meal and meeting spaces. On Monday September 1, MCN will be running a  5S training day for registered users of the facility. The session will start at 11 with a workshop in the boardroom and will include a light lunch. This will then be followed with a hands-on session in the labs from 2-5pm.

All users are strongly encouraged to attend the training workshop and are asked to assist with the implementation of this program by following rosters, replacing items in their correct place and taking note of signs and labels around the building. Through working together to follow these new systems, staff and users can work together to build a stronger, safer and more productive workplace for everyone.

MCN’s bi-annual induction refresher will be running from 10-11am on the morning of the 5S training session, as well as all the other days that week (1 – 5 September) so that users are able to attend both in succession. Both events will be held in the MCN board room and registration is not required.

Flexible electronics and lightweight pressure sensing devices are expanding the boundaries of technology into the fields of soft robotics, electronic skins and flexible displays. Current rigid circuit board technologies are limited in their applications, particularly with regards to medical devices and bionics. MCN Technology Fellow, Associate Professor Wenlong Cheng from Monash University, has been leading a team in the development of stretchable, elastomeric conductors for use in pressure sensing.

The focus of this project is the creation of pressure sensors which enable portable pulse and heart rate monitoring, as well as body movement sensing and are hoped to ultimately lead to electronic skin as the future of medical devices.

Flexible electronics have been the focus of much research attention recently, with work involving various nanomaterials, nanowires, carbon nanotubes, nanoparticles and grapheme being undertaken. Most of these are based on force-induced changes in capacitance or piezo-electricity, while Associate Professor Cheng’s group has been creating sensors based on resistive pressure. The advantage of this approach is the simplicity of the device fabrication as well as the relatively low amount of energy required to operate the device.

Utilising the facilities at MCN, his team has developed a simple, yet efficient, low-cost nanotechnological approach to integrating ultrathin gold nanowires into tissue paper to create a flexible sensor. The gold nanowires are just 2nm thick, yet tens of microns long and are both mechanically flexible and robust. Once nanowires have been soaked into tissue paper, it is then sandwiched between two thin layers of PDMS  - one blank and the other patterned with an interdigitated electrode array - and attached to wiring to create a wearable sensor that can provide readings of blood pressure, heart rate and body movement. Such sensors are so sensitive, that tiny forces from blood pulses and acoustic vibrational forces can be accurately detected. What’s more, these devices are robust and can be fabricated in large quantities at low cost using scalable wet chemistry processing steps.

This development of soft electronics holds huge potential for portable health monitoring devices. Associate Professor Cheng will be looking at the commercial development of this project next.

Associte Professor Cheng can be heard discussing these sensors on the BBC radio program, Click. The interview starts approximately 6 minutes into the show.

You can read more about this project in the Nature Communications Paper, published in February 2014.

Four stack furnace

To compliment the high temperature furnace facility already available at the MCN, a new four-stack horizontal furnace is currently being installed in the class 10,000 cleanroom. This new furnace will allow batch processing of up to 150mm wafers and will provide access to high temperature processing (>1000 degrees Celsius) of silicon and other substrates. The system features a HEPA controlled loading station as well as four individual processing tubes to cater for dopant diffusion, annealing and the low-pressure chemical vapour deposition of silicon nitride.

This furnace will be available to users in the next few months. Please contact paul.spizzirri@nanomelbourne.com for more information.

Optical Profilometer

MCN is the first facility in Australia to install an all-new Bruker Contour GT-I Optical Profilometer – a fully automated, desktop optical microscope which measures surface features over a range of angles. The combination of tip/tilt in the head with automated staging and objectives, as well as vibration resistant measurement techniques, make the Contour GT-I ideal for measure on demand industrial requirements.

The Contour GT-I joins MCN’s Ambios XP 200 profilometer and provides a 3D optical profilometry capability. Optical profilometry employs phase-shifting and/or vertical scanning interferometry to resolve the topology of complex 3D structures. The technique marries precision z-axis control with interference based techniques to resolve features from the angstrom to millimetre scale. The technique lends itself well to die-based measurements for ISO/QA and large area mapping.

The optical profilometer will be available to users from August 2014. Please contact sean.langelier@nanomelbourne.com for more information.

Congratulations to MCN Technology Fellow, Professor Saulius Juodkazis and MCN staff member, Gediminas Gervinskas, who co-authored the paper entitled “Phase Transformation in Laser-Induced Micro-Explosion in Olivine (Fe,Mg)2SiO4,” recently published in Advanced Engineering Materials. The paper explores micro-explosions generated by tightly focused single pulses of a femtosecond laser in olivine, showing that they produce change of iron valence state. Chemical and structural changes were investigated using synchrotron X-ray spectroscopy and Raman scattering. This study confirms that this mechanism may present a general pathway towards the creation of novel crystalline and amorphous nano-materials. (see figure 1) 

Congratulations to MCN staff member, Dr. Ricky Tjeung, as well as MCN Technology Fellows, Professor James Friend and Dr. Peggy Chan who co-authored the paper “In Situ Generation of Tunable Porosity Gradients in Hydrogel-Based Scaffolds for Microfluidic Cell Culture,” recently published in Advanced Materials. The paper shows that an anisotropic matrix, which allows users to alter its properties and structure in situ after synthesis, offers the important advantage of being able to mimic dynamic in vivo microenvironments, such as in tissues undergoing morphogenesis or in wounds undergoing tissue repair. In this study, in situ tunable porosity gradient on the chemotactic response of cancer cells is studied both in the absence and presence of chemoattractant. This platform illustrates the potential of hydrogel-based microfluidics to mimic the 3D in vivo microenvironment for tissue engineering and diagnostic applications. (see figure 2) 

Congratulations to Didit Yudistira et al who recently published “UV Direct Write Metal Enhanced Redox (MER) Domain Engineering for Realization of Surface Acoustic Devices on Lithium Niobate” in Advanced Materials. The paper looks at a new and highly versatile domain patterning method—ultraviolet direct write metal enhanced redox (UV direct write MER)— to achieve deep domains with practically no thermally-induced damage on the surface of lithium niobate crystals. This new technique enables the fabrication of practical piezoelectric acoustic superlattice structures on the most widely used crystal cut for surface acoustic wave applications. This is the first demonstration of a UV direct write surface acoustic wave transducer reported to date, made possible only due to the unique qualities of the MER domain engineering process. (see figure 3) 

Congratulations to Daohong Zhang et al who recently published the paper entitled “Core-Spun Carbon Nanotube Yarn Supercapacitors for Wearable Electronic Textiles,” in ACS Nano. The paper presents a core/sheath structured carbon nanotube yarn architecture and a method for one-step continuous spinning of the yarn for the creation of long linear supercapacitors. In the yarn, the carbon nanotubes form a thin surface layer around a highly conductive metal filament core, which serves as current collector so that charges produced on the active materials along the length of the supercapacitor are transported efficiently, resulting in significant improvement in electrochemical performance and scale up of the supercapacitor length. The long, strong, and flexible threadlike supercapacitor is suitable for production of large-size fabrics for wearable electronic applications. (see figure 4) 

Congratultions to Jiaweng Yong et al for their paper, “Gold-Nanorod-Assisted Near-Infrared Stimulation of Primary Auditory Neurons,” recently published in Advanced Healthcare Materials. This paper explores the use of near infrared lasers to stimulate neuronal tissue due to its potential for direct, non-contact activation at high spatial resolutions. Cultured rat primary auditory neurons incubated with silica-coated gold nanorods were investigated with near infrared lasers. The nanorod-treated auditory neurons show a significant increase in electrical activity compared with neurons which are incubated with non-absorbing silica-coated gold nanospheres and control neurons with no gold nanoparticles. This demonstrate the potential to improve the efficiency and increase the penetration depth of Inelastic neutron scattering by labeling nerves with gold nanorods and then exposing them to infrared wavelengths in the water window of tissue. (see figure 5) 

Congratulations to MCN Technology Fellow, Dr. Peggy Chan who co-authored the paper, “Cardiogenesis of Embryonic Stem Cells with Liquid Marble Micro-Bioreactor,” published in Advanced Healthcare Materials. The paper looks, for the first time, at the feasibility of differentiating embryonic stem cells into cardiac lineages within liquid marbles. Results highlighted demonstrate that the liquid-marble technique is an easily employed, cost effective, and efficient approach to generate embryoid bodies and facilitate their cardiogenesis. (see figure 6) 

Congratulations to MCN Technology Fellow, Assoc Professor Wenlong Cheng who co-authored the paper entitled, “Manufacturable Conducting Rubber Ambers and Stretchable Conductors from Copper Nanowire Aerogel Monoliths,” recently published in ACS Nano. The paper reports on a low-cost, simple and efficient strategy to fabricate ultralightweight aerogel monoliths and conducting rubber ambers from copper nanowires. A trace amount of polyvinyl alcohol substantially improved the mechanical robustness and elasticity of the copper nanowire aerogel while maintaining a high electrical conductivity. Remarkably, the copper nanowire aerogels could be further embedded into PDMS resin, forming conducting rubber ambers. The ambers could be further manufactured simply by cutting into any arbitrary 1D, 2D, and 3D shapes, which were all intrinsically conductive without the need of external prewiring, a condition required in the previous aerogel-based conductors. (see figure 7) 

The recent installment of the Kleindiek Lift-Out Shuttle on the MCN Dual Beam Focused Ion Beam Scanning Electron Microscope (FIB-SEM) has helped VahidReza Adineh, a Monash University PhD student, to achieve what was not possible with several months of work using the standard 3‐axis micromanipulator.

VahidReza was aiming to take a thin slice of a mouse whisker and place it cut-side down on a silicon wafer so that he could then utilise the Atomic Force Microscope to perform characterisation on the sample. However, with the regular micromanipulator probe installed in the FIB-SEM, it was almost impossible to place the whisker segment cut-side down on the wafer. After several months of trying different section lengths, placing methods and needle placement, VahidReza had not been able to successfully gain the sample needed for imaging.

With the installment of the Kleindiek Nanotechnik Lift-Out Shuttle, the sample was able to be prepared within just a few hours. The microgripper was used to gently grip the sample while it was removed from the whisker, after which it controlled the placement of the whisker segment on the wafer and secured it with the deposition of platinum patches.

The Lift-Out Shuttle allows users heightened control of their samples in situ and is consistently reliable and efficient in manipulating very small objects, saving users time and money. For more information on how you can make the most of this capability, please contact Fatima Eftekahri.