What we do
The forefront of much modern engineering and science research is at the scale of the smallest devices currently possible - in the range of nanometres. For engineers, the advantages of such small devices include increased speed and packing density, and novel functionality. For the scientist, working on such small scales reveals a range of exciting and unexpected fundamental phenomena.
Ideally engineering and scientific developments feed off each other: the NEST group performs advanced research in niche areas across the spectrum of applied engineering and basic science of nano-metre scale structures. The group focuses on fabrication and characterisation of nano-scale electronic and opto-electronic devices.
The broad objectives of our work are:
- to develop a fundamental understanding of basic nanofabrication processes and of building elements of nanoscale systems.
- to develop techniques for fabricating new materials and devices with nanoscale dimensions.
- to feed the results of 1) and 2) into engineering projects with clearly defined technological goals.
The long term applications of this work are in areas such as optical communications, high density information storage, and electronics.
The article on Physics and Fabrication of Nanostructured Materials and Devices gives an overview of the extended group's recent research, including:
- ZnO devices and surfaces
- Gallium Nitride (GaN)
- Amorphous Superlattices
- Evanescent Near Field Optical Lithography (ENFOL)
- Nano-imprint lithography (NIL)
- Advanced Surface Texturing for Solar Cells
- Atomic clusters
- Silicon nano-whiskers
- Microfluidics and Lab-on-a-Chip Devices