March 2020: A collaboration led by KIC members Kin Fai Mak and Jie Shan has successfully created  a simulator using ultrathin monolayers that overlap to make a moiré pattern. The team then used this solid-state platform to map a longstanding conundrum in physics: the phase diagram of the triangular lattice Hubbard model. Read more about the collaboration on the Cornell Chronicle.

December 2019: A  collaboration led by KIC member Darrel Schlom has created a new material that will bring clarity and extra bandwidth to the next generation of cellphones and other high-frequency electronics. The material is capable of operating at frequencies up to 125 GHz, well above the desired 30 GHz for the next wave of 5G and even 6G cell service. The tunable dielectric could also be used for defense applications such as electronic spoofing, in which a signal is deployed to confuse high-frequency radar systems. Read more about project on the Cornell Chronicle.

November 2019: A team led by KIC co-director Paul McEuen and KIC member Itai Cohen is using the binding power of magnets to design self-assembling systems that potentially can be created in nanoscale form. Read more about the collaboration on the Cornell Chronicle.

August 2, 2019: Dr. Stuart Parkin (Director, Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle, Germany) presented a Kavli Distinguished Lecture entitled “Beyond Charge Currents: Spin and ion currents for future data storage and computing technologies.”

Abstract: The era of computing technologies based on charge currents is coming to an end after more than  40 years of exponential increases in computing power and data storage that have been largely based on shrinking devices in two dimensions.  A new era of “Beyond charge!” will evolve over the next decade that will likely be based on several new concepts. Firstly, devices whose innate properties are derived not from the electron’s charge but from spin currents and from ion currents.  In some cases new functionality will arise that can extend charge based devices but in other case fundamentally new computing and data storage paradigms will evolve.  Secondly, devices will inevitably become three-dimensional: novel means of constructing devices, both from bottom-up and top-down, will become increasingly important. Thirdly, bio-inspired devices that may mimic the extremely energy efficient computation systems in the biological world are compelling.  In this talk I will discuss possible nascent spintronic and ionitronic materials and devices and how they may lead to novel computing and data storage technologies over the next decade or so.

This event was hosted by the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and by the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science.

July 2019: KIC member Kin Fai Mak, Associate Professor of Physics, is one of four Cornell faculty members recognized by the White House with a prestigious 2019 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Read more about Kin Fai Mak and his research in this Cornell Chronicle article.

June, 2019: KIC members Eun-Ah Kim and Seamus Davis use machine learning to analyze the data generated by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to provide valuable information unattainable by any other method. Read more in the Cornell Chronicle.

June, 2019: KIC Member and Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Héctor Abruña, has been awarded the Frumkin Memorial Medal from the International Society of Electrochemistry in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field. Read the full story in the Cornell Chronicle.

May, 2019: Incoming KIC Postdoc Kelly Luo has been selected as one of eight 2019 Cornell Presidential Fellows. Luo’s research involves two-dimensional hybrid material systems. She plans to work with Professor Dan Ralph‘s research group when she arrives in September. Read more about the Presidential Fellowship Program and the other recently selected Fellows in the Cornell Chronicle.

April, 2019: KIC Director Paul McEuen, KIC member Itai Cohen, and former KIC Postdoctoral fellow Mark Miskin were featured in the New York Times on April 30, 2019 for their ground-breaking (and KIC-funded) microbot research.  Read the full story here.

April 2019: Exotic behaviors emerge in atoms when cooled to near absolute zero, a temperature so cold that atoms cease their jittery movement. By bringing the isotope helium-3 to the brink of that threshold and confining it to a tiny space, KIC member Jeevak Parpia discovered that a surprising polka dot pattern spontaneously appeared in the superfluid.  Read the full story in the Cornell Chronicle.

April 2019: As a genetic material, DNA is responsible for all known life. But DNA is also a polymer. Tapping into the unique nature of the molecule, KIC members Dan Luo and Shogo Hamada have created simple machines constructed of biomaterials with properties of living things. Read more in the Cornell Chronicle.

March 13, 2019: Professor Hong Tang (School of Engineering & Applied Physics, Yale University) presented a Kavli Distinguished Lecture entited “Integrated χ(2) Photonics.”

Abstract: The ability to generate and manipulate photons with high efficiency and coherence is of critical importance for both fundamental quantum optics studies and practical device applications. However mainstream integrated photonic platforms such as those based on silicon and silicon nitride lack the preferred cubic χ(2) nonlinearity, which limits active photon control functionalities. In this talk, I will present integrated photonics based on aluminum nitride (AlN), whose wurtzite crystal structure gives rise to the strong second-order optical nonlinearity and piezoelectric effect. Together with its low optical and mechanical losses, the integrated AlN photonics can provide enhanced χ(2) photon-photon interactions to achieve high fidelity photon control, including on-chip parametric down-conversion, coherent light conversion, spectral-temporal shaping, and microwave-to-optical frequency conversions.

This event was hosted by the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and by the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science.

March 2019: Assistant Professor of Physics and KIC member Brad Ramshaw has been named as a recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship. This award supports early-career faculty members’ original research and broad-based education related to science, technology, and economic performance.  Read more about Ramshaw’s research focus and the potential impact of this fellowship in the Cornell Chronicle.

March, 2019: Former KIC Postdoc Marc Miskin, now Associate Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering at UPenn, presented his ground breaking work on cell-sized micro robots at the APS meeting in Boston March 4-8. The nanofabrication techniques were developed at Cornell with his colleagues (and KIC members), professors Itai Cohen and Paul McEuen. Read more about the origins of these robots as well as potential applications in Science Daily.

Feb 2019: A nano-sized guitar string vibrates and crackles in an unexpectedly organized and intricate way, according to KIC Director Paul McEuen, whose research group devised a way to listen to a nanoscale guitar for the first time – and then played the Cornell alma mater on it. Their work was published in Nature Jan. 21. Read more in the Cornell Chronicle.