Visiting plasmonics experts

Prof. Giessen addressing the audience 
Dr. Liu addressing the audience 
The audience at MCN 

Visiting world experts in plasmonics, Professor Harold Giessen and Dr Laura Na Liu recently enlightened audiences at MCN.

Chair of Ultrafast Nanooptics in the Department of Physics at the University of Stuttgart, Prof. Harald Giessen discussed complex plasmonics, taking a look at the fundamentals before discussing their possible applications. Plasmonics is the technology based on electrical resonances excited by light on metal nano particles that enables the properties of light to be manipulated at the nano scale.

Prof. Giessen touched on chirality with a plasmonic model system, before discussing non-reciprocal plasmonics for controlling the polarization of light, known as the Faraday Rotation. He finished by presenting a number of novel sensing applications, ranging from 3D rulers for measuring displacements of molecules to novel plasmonic gas and liquid sensors.

A group leader at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and recipient of the prestigious Sofja Kovalevskaja Award, Dr. Laura Na Liu shared her work on three dimensional DNA plasmonics. She discussed the control of complex arrangements of 3D plasmonic structures using DNA self-assembly or DNA origami. Due to the intrinsic programmability and excellent functionalities of DNA, the plasmonic nanomachine can respond to external stimulus upon recognition of biochemical events or stimulated movements of the DNA template. These 'smart' plasmonic nanostructures can be used as sensors for biological systems to help answer questions of structural biology.

The talks by Prof. Giessen and Dr. Liu were organized by MCN Technology Fellows, Tim Davis and Daniel Gomez from CSIRO.

Image of the year winner announced

The winning image, PolyHIPE 

The MCN wishes to congratulate Dr. Florian Lapierre for his winning image in last year’s Image of the Year Competition, PolyHIPE. Reminiscent of a lunar landscape, Florian’s image shows a highly porous polymer bead, which was generated using an easy-to-manufacture microfluidic device and cross-linked under UV irradiation.

This PolyHIPE material with 80% porosity shows potential for use in a range of applications including tissue engineering, 3D cell culturing, bio-catalysis and hydrogen storage.

Dr Florian Lapierre is a Postdoctoral Fellow at CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering under the supervision of Drs Yonggang Zhu, Thomas Peat and John Oakeshott. The work was completed in collaboration with Prof. Neil Cameron from Durham University, UK.

A big thank you to all participants for their many wonderful entries.

MCN at ICONN 2014

A lunch-time demonstration at the ANFF booth 
MCN's Lachlan Hyde with one of the winners of our A-maze-ing race competition. 
The ANFF team at ICONN 2014 

The start of February saw MCN and ANFF attend the International Conference on Nanoscience and Nanotechology (ICONN). Held concurrently with the 23rd Australian Conference on Microscopy and Microanalysis, the conference attracted a large number of delegates interested in microbiology and nanocharacterization.

The ANFF booth was alive with discussion and activity with lunchtime demonstrations in microfluidics, 3D printing and a versatile enhanced surface plasmon resonance sensor based on optical fibres. MCN Process Engineer, Lachlan Hyde ran an A-maze-ing race competition which saw competitors race an oversize maze puzzle to take first place on the leaderboard. Congratulations to Nima Dehdashti, Nicholas Tse and Melanie Ramiasa – the three lucky winners who took away a bottle of award winning South Australian wine for their speedy times, and thank you to everyone who stopped by the booth!

New faces at MCN – Bernie Orelup

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MCN would like to welcome Bernie Orelup, who recently joined the team as a Senior Process Engineer. Bernie brings with him a multidisciplinary background in materials science and engineering (BSc - Purdue University), business administration (MBA - Arizona State University), and management.

Prior to joining the MCN, Bernie spent 17 years with the semiconductor fabrication industry, working in process engineering and manufacturing with Intel Corporation. His expertise includes nanotechnology process development, process characterisation, equipment start-ups, manufacturing operations, cost reduction, quality control, and employee management and training. Bernie also brings a wealth of industrial cleanroom fabrication experience and knowledge in the areas of dry/chemical etching, thin films deposition, and optical photolithography to support MCN clients.

Virtual tour of MCN cleanroom

If you’ve ever been curious about what the inside of the MCN's world-class cleanroom looks like, or if you’ve wanted to share the experience with your friends and colleagues, you can now do so with a virtual tour in the video below.

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel, Nanofabtv, to be the first to see our videos as they go live!

Upcoming events and dates

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As well as MCN’s seminars which are running in the first half of 2014, MCN will also be attending National Manufacturing Week (13-16 May) and the World Congress on Biosensors (27- 30 May). Drop past the MCN booth to find out how you can get involved and for the chance to win prizes in the upcoming competitions.

Find out more about MCN's upcoming events at the events page of this website.

Noteworthy publications

Figure 1: (a) A schematic illustration of the fabrication of a flexible sensor. (b) Demonstration of sensor flexibility. (c) SEM image of the morphology of gold nanowires coated tissue fibres (scale bar,100 um).
Figure 2: Confocoal microscopy (top) and SEM (bottom) images showing pore size and morphology of swollen pGtn hydrogel and lyophilized pGtn hydrogel, respectively. 

Congratulations to MCN Technology Fellow, Wenlong Cheng, who co-authored the paper entitled “A wearable and highly sensitive pressure sensor with ultrathin gold nanowires,” recently published in Nature Communications. The paper presents an efficient, low cost fabrication strategy for constructing highly sensitive, flexible pressure sensors. The process involves sandwiching tissue paper impregnated with ultrathin gold nanowires between two sheets of polydimethylsiloxane. These sensors are scalable, with superior sensing qualities to previous sensors and can be operated at a battery voltage of 1.5V with low energy consumption. Read more here. (see figure 1) 

Congratulations to MCN Technology Fellow, Peggy Chan, who co-authored the paper entitled "Effects of GDNF-Loaded Injectable Gelatin-Based Hydrogels on Endogenous Neural Progenitor Cell Migration," recently published in Advanced Materials. Brain repair following disease and injury is very limited due to difficulties in recruiting and mobilizing stem cells towards the lesion. This study investigates the effectiveness of an injectable gelatin-based hydrogel in attracting neural progenitor cells towards the implant.The development of an injectable gelatin-based hydrogel has significant implications for the treatment of some neurodegenerative diseases and brain injuries. The ability of GDNF and porosity to effectively prevent glial scar formation will allow better integration and interaction between the implant and surrounding neural tissue. Read more here. (see figure 2)