2. 2 MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 3
TOC
FOUNDED MORE THAN 25 YEARS AGO AS A III-V COMPOUND SEMICONDUCTOR MATERI-
ALS AND DEVICES RESEARCH AND INNOVATION FACILITY, THE MICRO + NANOTECHNOLO-
GY LAB HAS ENABLED UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS RESEARCHERS TO ADVANCE TECHNOLO-
GY IN HIGH-SPEED DATA COMMUNICATIONS, HIGH-EFFICIENCY LIGHTING, SOLAR POWER,
FLEXIBLE ELECTRONICS, AND NOVEL MICROELECTRONICS/PHOTONICS CONCEPTS FOR
NEXT-GENERATION COMPUTING ARCHITECTURES. WITH THE ADDITION OF THE BIONANO-
TECHNOLOGY LAB COMPLEX IN 2007, OUR RESEARCHERS ARE ALSO MAKING ADVANCES
IN BIOMEDICAL IMAGING, BIOMEDICAL DIAGNOSTICS, AND ENVIRONMENTAL MONITOR-
ING, WHILE DEVELOPING NEW TOOLS FOR LIFE SCIENCE RESEARCH.
THROUGHOUT THE YEARS, WE’VE BEEN ONE OF THE PREMIER BIO- AND NANOTECHNOLO-
GY TRAINING SITES FOR YOUNG SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS, PREPARING THEM TO
TACKLE NEW RESEARCH PROBLEMS AND CREATE NOVEL PRODUCTS AND PROCESSES.
TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF THE DEPTH AND BREADTH OF OUR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION
AND TRAINING PROGRAM, WE’VE COMPILED THIS HIGHLIGHTS REPORT (2014-2015),
SHOWCASING THE WORK AND PEOPLE THAT MAKE MNTL ONE OF THE FINEST UNIVERSI-
TY-BASED RESEARCH FACILITIES IN THE WORLD.
3. MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 5
The technologies being developed by the faculty and students who conduct their research in the Micro +
Nanotechnology Lab (MNTL) have been essential to many important developments in our society—from
high-speed optoelectronic devices that enable the Internet, to materials and structures that form the foun-
dations of high-speed computation, to photonic nanostructures used in biosensors for medical diagnos-
tics, to microelectromechanical transducers that form the basis for radio frequency filters. In nearly every
case, these technologies required a cycle of incubation, iteration, and demonstration as we moved from
understanding their fundamental properties to realizing their performance potential.
While we publicize important breakthroughs in this 2014-15 MNTL highlights report, we know that each break-
through actually took a great deal of effort over many months to convert a novel idea into a demonstrated reality.
It takes even longer to turn these innovations into products. We engage with our faculty, students, alumni, and
industry partners for the entire process.
In fact, we are launching a new Industry Affiliates Program in 2016 to better facilitate our technical interactions,
communication, and funding of our research with a broad range of companies.
AS YOU READ OUR MNTL HIGHLIGHTS REPORT, YOU WILL NOTICE THAT
OUR RESEARCH IS INCREASINGLY INTERDISCIPLINARY. FOR EXAMPLE,
>> The National Science Foundation recently provided $25 million in renewal funding for the Emergent Behav-
iors of Integrated Cellular Systems (EBICS) center, which brings together engineers, polymer chemists, cell
biologists, and neuroscientists to create new classes of systems built from cellular building blocks.
We recently established an Illinois Partnership for Vision Engineering that is facilitating collaboration between
MNTL scientists and clinical ophthalmologists and engineers at the University of Illinois in Chicago. This part-
nership aims to solve grand challenges in the implementation of targeted nanoparticle drug delivery, sensor-in-
tegration with artificial corneas, and electronic-biological interfaces.
While some of our faculty are working closely with colleagues who specialize in the circuits and systems that
will form the fabrics of next-generation low power computation systems, others are working with specialists in
infectious disease or cancer to develop point-of-care diagnostic tests. The possibilities are endless, as materi-
als and structures we can create on the nanometer scale are the enablers of systems that manipulate photons,
electrons, biomolecules, and cells.
One of our core missions is to educate, inspire, and train students to become the next generation of innovative
leaders in these multidisciplinary fields. You will see in this report that MNTL’s outreach is enormous. During 2014
and 2015, with leadership provided by the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST), we welcomed
more than 50 researchers to our BioNanotechnology Summer Institute, 16 middle high school and community
college STEM faculty to our Research Experience for Teachers program, and 26 students to our Research Ex-
perience for Undergraduates program. We also hosted the 13th Annual CNST Workshop, which featured distin-
guished keynote speakers and industry representatives.
2016 promises to be another outstanding year at MNTL. We were fortunate to bring in several new faculty—Wen-
juan Zhu, Can Bayram, and Arend van der Zande—who are establishing their research groups to create innova-
tions in flexible optoelectronics, novel 2-dimensional materials devices, and novel photonic device architectures.
Please read on to learn more about how we are turning nano-scale discoveries into world-changing technologies.
Brian T. Cunningham
MNTL Director
MNTL 2014-2015
PROJECT MANAGER
Laura Schmitt
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Liz Ahlberg, Meg Dickinson, Rick Kubetz,
Jonathan Lin, Laura Schmitt
DESIGN
Winter Agency
IMAGES
Brian Stauffer, Thompson • McClellan, Jonathan Lin,
Janet Sinn-Hanlon, Design Group@VetMed (pg 12)
MNTL ADMINISTRATION
DIRECTOR
Brian Cunningham
INDUSTRY AFFILIATES PROGRAM
MANAGING DIRECTOR
Greg Pluta
FACILITIES MANAGER
Ken Tarman
BUSINESS OFFICE MANAGER
Nandini Topudurti
BIONANOTECHNOLOGY LAB MANAGER
Angana Senpan
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS
Laura Schmitt
CENTER ADMINISTRATION
IRFAN AHMAD
Center for Nanoscale Science Technology Executive
Director and Research Faculty Agricultural Biological
Engineering
CARRIE KOUADIO
Center for Nanoscale Science Technology and NSF
Science Technology Center: Emergent Behavior of
Integrated Cellular Systems Program Coordinator
GREG PLUTA
Center for Innovative Instrumentation Technology (NSF
I/UCRC) Managing Director
RESEARCH BRIEFS
FACULTY AWARDS
NEW INITIATIVES
RESEARCH FUNDING
STUDENT RESEARCH
MNTL IMPACT
19
18
8
24
27
30
4. 6 MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 7
A JEWEL IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING CROWN,
THE MICRO + NANOTECHNOLOGY LAB PROVIDES 300 STUDENTS AND DOZENS OF
FACULTY RESEARCHERS WITH ALL THE ADVANCED TOOLS THEY NEED FOR CON-
DUCTING PHOTONICS, MICROELECTRONICS, BIOTECHNOLOGY, AND NANOTECH-
NOLOGY RESEARCH.
MNTL IS ONE OF THE ONLY UNIVERSITY-BASED RESEARCH FACILITIES IN THE
COUNTRY TO HAVE STATE-OF-THE-ART CLEANROOMS AND A BIOSAFETY LEVEL-2
COMPLEX ALL UNDER ONE ROOF, ENABLING OUR RESEARCHERS TO CONDUCT
GROUNDBREAKING WORK AT THE INTERSECTION OF ENGINEERING AND BIOLO-
GY. MNTL RESEARCHERS DESIGN, BUILD, AND TEST INNOVATIVE NANOSCALE
TECHNOLOGIES, SPANNING SIZES FROM ATOMS TO ENTIRE SYSTEMS.
IF YOU CAN’T MAKE IT HERE, YOU CAN’T MAKE IT ANYWHERE.
EXPERIMNTL
5. 8 MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 9
NEW SYNTHETIC
TUMOR ENVIRONMENTS
MAKE CANCER RESEARCH
MORE REALISTIC
SELF-ROLLED-UP MEMBRANE
HAS MEDICAL AND ELECTRONIC
APPLICATIONS
ECE Professors John Dallesasse and Milton Feng have created a
transistor-injected quantum cascade laser, which is a hybrid of an
heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) and quantum cascade laser
(QCL). This 3-terminal device emits light between the mid-infra-red
and terahertz frequencies, can be made on many substrates, and
can be manufactured easily in a commercial GaAs foundry. “We think
the advantages of our device are compelling because the [TI-QCL]
will allow not only a lot of conventional QCL uses like gas detection,
chemical sensing, and process monitoring, but it will also enable
some interesting communications applications for free-space links,”
said Dallesasse. “Applications in the THz region might also open up
because of our device.”
Materials Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Kris Kilian and Illinois
colleagues have developed a new technique to create a cell habitat of squishy
fluids, called hydrogels, which can realistically and quickly recreate microenvi-
ronments found across biology. To illustrate the potential of their technique,
the Illinois team mixed breast cancer cells and cells called macrophages that
signal cancer cells to spread and grow into a tumor. They were able to observe
how differently cells act in the three-dimensional, gel-like environment, which is
much more like body tissues than current options—a flat, hard plastic plate or
expensive mouse avatars that are created by injecting human tumor cells into
mice. “This is really the first time that it’s been demonstrated that you can use
a rapid methodology like this to spatially define cancer cells and macrophages,”
said Kilian, noting the importance of the architecture to answering fundamental
biological questions.
What sets the team’s model apart from mouse avatars and hard plastic plates is
that it can replicate much more accurately the sizes and shapes of the microen-
vironment within the patient’s problem area. The materials that pharmaceutical
companies use to test drugs’ effects on cells don’t allow for three-dimensional
vascularization, a network of capillaries that carry drugs and other materials
throughout the body. The team’s model does, creating networks that go from
straight, to snakelike, to any shape.
ECE Professor Xiuling Li and Cell Developmental Biology Professor Martha Gillette
led a team of researchers who created a neuron cell culturing platform that con-
sists of arrays of ordered microtubes (2.7-4.4μm in diameter) formed by strain-in-
duced self-rolled-up nanomembrane (s-RUM) technology using ultrathin (40 nm)
silicon nitride (SiNx) film on transparent substrates. This patented technique helps
neuron cells grow 20x faster than conventional methods. Someday these micro-
tubes may be implanted like stents to promote neuron regrowth at injury sites or
to treat disease.
Several years ago, Li’s group used the s-RUM technique to make an inductor, a
key integrated circuit element, 100x smaller without sacrificing performance. Pro-
cessed while flat, the inductors then roll themselves up on their own, taking up
much less space on a chip.
NOVEL PATENTED
LASER HAS
ENVIRONMENTAL,
HEALTH, AND
MANUFACTURING
APPLICATIONS
6. 10 MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 11
WHEN THE NEW CARLE ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF MEDICINE WELCOMES ITS FIRST
CLASS OF 25 STUDENTS IN THE FALL OF 2018, IT WILL BE THE FIRST SUCH COL-
LEGE IN THE COUNTRY TO BE SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED AT THE INTERSECTION OF
ENGINEERING AND MEDICINE. MNTL DIRECTOR BRIAN CUNNINGHAM ENVISIONS
THE COLLEGE OF MEDICINE WILL HELP FACILITATE NEW INTERACTIONS BETWEEN
MNTL RESEARCHERS AND THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY.
“The new College of Medicine will bring clinical researchers from many disciplines
into closer proximity with MNTL faculty, providing opportunities for discussions
that lead to research collaborations, and for research collaborations to translate
into clinical practice,” said Cunningham, who recently led the formation of a new
Illinois Partnership for Ophthalmology Engineering, which brings ophthalmologist
faculty at the U of I Chicago campus together with Urbana engineering faculty for
research collaborations aimed at drug delivery, diagnostic tests, surgical tools,
and implanted devices.
Bioengineering Department Head Rashid Bashir, a former MNTL director, was a
key member of the team that helped develop plans for the medical school and
guided the proposal through the campus and Board of Trustees approval process.
“Microfluidics and nanotechnology as applied to biology and medicine will be im-
portant technology pillars of the new College of Medicine—both from a curriculum
and research perspective,” said Bashir, who will co-chair the Carle Illinois College
of Medicine’s core curriculum committee. “MNTL’s Bionanotechnology Lab and
cleanrooms provide unique research and educational facilities for the physician
inventors and innovators of tomorrow trained in the new College of Medicine.”
Many MNTL faculty are leaders in the photonics and nanoelectron-
ics areas, and are known for creating the highest speed transistors,
solid-state lasers, and integration of optical components for opti-
cal fiber communications. With the new College of Medicine, these
technologies will provide opportunities for cross-disciplinary col-
laboration that can include laser-based therapies, optical devices
for monitoring physiological health conditions, and light sources
for biomedical imaging.
PROFESSORS RASHID BASHIR, LOGAN LIU, AND BRIAN CUNNINGHAM are working on
high sensitivity biosensor technology that can be operated by miniature detection in-
struments for applications known as the “point of care.” These detection technologies
will enable doctors to perform tests and get quick results in remote health clinics, phar-
macies, and in some cases, even in the patients’ home. Currently, such tests are per-
formed in clinical diagnostic laboratories and often take hours or days to yield results.
MATERIALS SCIENCE ENGINEERING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR KRIS KILIAN is devel-
oping innovative approaches to regenerative medicine—a new, promising area that has
the potential to heal damaged tissue and organs. His group is developing materials that
mimic the cellular environment to better understand the stem cell differentiation pro-
cess, which is key to restoring tissue structure and function caused by injury or disease.
ECE PROFESSOR KEVIN KIM’S GROUP has developed a way to encapsulate drugs in
biodegradable polymer microspheres that control the release of pharmaceutical com-
pounds directly into their target tissues for high efficacy and reduced side effects.
ECE PROFESSOR XIULING LI has developed stents only a few microns in diameter that
can speed up and direct neuron growth. These tiny structures might someday help
patients with Alzheimer’s or traumatic brain injury.
BIOENGINEERING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR ANDREW SMITH is developing a novel class
of medical image contrast agents called quantum dots that will be used in many forms
of tissue pathology to increase the contrast with which doctors can visualize disease.
Applications include early cancer detection, cancer treatment, cardiac monitoring, and
metabolite tracking.
BIOENGINEERING PROFESSOR ROHIT BHARGAVA led a team that has developed an
advanced imaging technique that scans a tissue sample with infrared light to directly
measure the chemical composition of the cells without using any chemical stains. This
new technique could help doctors and researchers more quickly assess cancer tissue
without damaging the cells.
NEW COLLEGE
OF MEDICINE
TO ENHANCE
RESEARCH
OPPORTUNITIES
IN ADDITION, SEVERAL MNTL
RESEARCHERS ARE ALREADY DIRECTLY
ENGAGED IN DEVELOPING TECHNOLOGY
THAT WILL HAVE AN IMPACT ON
FUTURE MEDICAL PRACTICE.
7. 12 MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 13
ENHANCING SOLAR
CELL PERFORMANCE
One way to improve the light absorption of solar cells is to create
anti-reflection material layers on the photovoltaic wafer. However,
all the possible approaches—multilayer dielectric film, nanoparticle
sludges, microtextures, and 3D silicon nanostructure arrays, to name
a few—are costly and often times incompatible with industry stan-
dards. ECE Associate Professor Gang Logan Liu has developed a
new nano-manufacturing technique called Simultaneous Plasma-En-
hanced Reactive Ion Synthesis Etching (SPERISE) that offers a bet-
ter anti-reflection solution while possibly increasing the p-n junction
surface area. SPERISE improves the overall efficiency and lowers the
manufacturing costs of solar cells. In fact, Liu’s group made a solar
cell with its single-step process that performed 18.3 % better than a
cell fabricated by standard industrial processes.
NANOTECHNOLOGY
ENHANCES DRUG DELIVERY
ECE Professors Kevin Kim and Hyungsoo Choi have created medi-
cine-laced nanoparticles that can be administered nasally to bypass
the blood-brain barrier. These nanoparticles target damaged brain tis-
sue and may provide a longer treatment window for stroke patients.
In one lab experiment, the drug molecules were encapsulated in gela-
tin nanoparticles and safely transported to the brain for the treatment
of ischemic stroke. A fundamental understanding of the way gelatin
nanoparticles interact with the brain may allow this technology to
someday be applied to humans.
TINY LASER
GIVES BIG BOOST
ECE Professor Milton Feng developed an oxide-confined vertical-cavi-
ty surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) that transmits error-free data over a
fiber-optic network at a blazing fast 57 gigabits per second, making it
the fastest directly modulated laser in the United States. This VCSEL’s
data-transfer capability will enhance telemedicine, tele-instruction,
and cloud computing. The VCSEL’s compact size also makes it very
energy efficient—it uses 100 times less energy than electrical wires.
Feng’s research group is working on fine-tuning the VCSEL’s design so
it can operate in the very hot environment of data centers. He antici-
pates pushing the VCSEL to about 60 Gbps.
Bioengineering Professor Rashid Bashir and Mechanical Science Engineering
Professor Taher Saif have demonstrated a class of tiny walking (less than a cen-
timeter in size) bio-bots powered by muscle cells and controlled with electrical
pulses. “Biological actuation driven by cells is a fundamental need for any kind
of biological machine you want to build,” said Bashir, the Abel Bliss Professor
and Bioengineering department head. “We’re trying to integrate these principles
of engineering with biology in a way that can be used to design and develop
biological machines and systems for environmental and medical applications.”
Previously, Bashir and his collaborators, including Chemical Biomolecular
Engineering Associate Professor Hyunjoon Kong, demonstrated bio-bots that
“walk” on their own, powered by beating heart cells from rats. However, heart
cells constantly contract, denying researchers control over the bot’s motion.
This makes it difficult to use heart cells to engineer a bio-bot that can be turned
on and off, sped up or slowed down.
The new bio-bots are powered by a strip of skeletal muscle cells, which are trig-
gered by an electric pulse. This gives the researchers a simple way to control
the bio-bots and opens the possibilities for other forward design principles, so
engineers can customize bio-bots for specific applications. “Skeletal muscles
cells are very attractive because you can pace them using external signals,”
Bashir said. “For example, you would use skeletal muscle when designing a
device that you wanted to start functioning when it senses a chemical or when
it received a certain signal. To us, it’s part of a design toolbox. We want to have
different options that could be used by engineers to design these things.”
PIONEERING
BIOLOGICAL MACHINES
8. 14 MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 15
CHIP-SCALE HYBRID
MICROSYSTEMS FOR RF COMMUNICATION,
SENSING, AND IMAGING APPLICATIONS
ECE Assistant Professor Songbin Gong has demonstrated a new type of multi-fre-
quency RF filter based on two-port laterally vibrating lithium niobate MEMS resona-
tors. The new filter, which operates on most broadband radio and tv, cellphone, and
Wi-Fi signals, exhibits electromechanical coupling coefficients of 8% at 500 MHz and
14.6% at 750 MHz, enabling low loss and wideband filtering. This filter may provide
a viable path to implement chip-scale reconfigurable front-ends, which includes all
the components in the receiver that process the signal at the original incoming radio
frequency—a solution desired by the telecommunications industry.
PROVIDING A
BETTER UNDERSTANDING
OF TOPOLOGICAL INSULATORS
ECE Associate Professor Matthew Gilbert and Physics faculty colleague Nadya Ma-
son are investigating novel materials called topological insulators and how they differ
from traditional semiconducting materials—an important step toward post-CMOS ap-
plications. Topological insulators have insulating interiors but surfaces that allow for
the flow of electrons. They have far different physical qualities than standard semi-
conducting materials like silicon.
Their research focuses on conductance oscillations in nanowires made of the topo-
logical insulator Bi2Se3, demonstrating that conduction occurs only on the surface,
which may eliminate the resistivity and related power dissipation due to bulk scat-
tering that occurs in typical device materials such as copper and silicon. In addition,
they found conductance behavior consistent with a “topological mode” that can be
turned on and off with a magnetic field. This unique topological mode is a necessary
component of proposed fault-tolerant quantum computing using these materials, yet
has not previously been demonstrated in nanowires.
BRIGHTNESS EQUALIZED
QUANTUM DOTS
IMPROVE BIOLOGICAL IMAGING
Bioengineering Assistant Professor Andrew Smith has introduced a new class of
light-emitting quantum dots (QDs) with tunable and equalized fluorescence bright-
ness across a broad range of colors. This results in more accurate measurements
of molecules in diseased tissue and improved quantitative imaging capabilities.
“Previously light emission had an unknown correspondence with molecule number,”
explained Smith. “Now it can be precisely tuned and calibrated to accurately count
specific molecules. This will be particularly useful for understanding complex pro-
cesses in neurons and cancer cells to help us unravel disease mechanisms, and for
characterizing cells from diseased tissue of patients.”
According to the researchers, these new materials will be especially important for
imaging in complex tissues and living organisms where there is a major need for
quantitative imaging tools, and can provide a consistent and tunable number of pho-
tons per tagged biomolecule. They are also expected to be used for precise color
matching in light-emitting devices and displays, and for photon-on-demand encryp-
tion applications. The same principles should be applicable across a wide range of
semiconducting materials.
It can take 20 years between the creation of a new material in the lab and the fabrica-
tion of next-generation consumer electronic devices that employ the material. Thanks to a
$1.5 million NSF cyber-infrastructure grant, University of Illinois researchers are working to
speed up the technology transfer process by up to 50 percent.
The Data Infrastructure Building Blocks (DIBBs) program will transform materials-to-de-
vice processes by creating new data infrastructure that would enable researchers to better
collect, curate and correlate scientific data generated during material creation and device
fabrication processes. Illinois researchers are collecting and curating digital data from se-
lected materials-making / characterization and device-fabrication instruments at MNTL
and the Materials Research Lab on campus. Co-principal investigators include Materials
Science Engineering Director John Rogers and MNTL Director Brian Cunningham.
“We have scientists who are producing cutting-edge materials accompanied by enormous
amounts of digital data from high-end instruments, and then writing down results in a note-
book or storing them on local disks. Only the most interesting results are published, while
others get deleted or stored in a drawer for 10 years,” said Computer Science Professor
Klara Narhstedt, the principal investigator of the grant and director of the Coordinated Sci-
ence Laboratory (CSL). “Our goal with the NSF DIBBs grant is to make sure this innovative
research is not only preserved, but that it’s also easy for other scientists, such as circuit and
device builders, to access and build upon their work.”.
ACCELERATING
MATERIALS-TO-DEVICES
CYCLE
9. 16 MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 17
ELECTRONIC DEVICE PERFORMANCE
ENHANCED WITH NEW TRANSISTOR
ENCASING METHOD
While silicon-based transistors have been the foundation of modern electronics for
more than 60 years, carbon nanotube wires show promise in someday replacing
silicon because they can operate ten times as fast and are more flexible. However,
they have an important gap to cross.
ECE Professor Joe Lyding has created a more effective method for closing gaps in
atomically small wires, further opening the doors to a new transistor technology.
“The connection between the nanotubes is highly resistive and results in slowing
the operation of the transistor down,” Lyding said. “When electrons go past that
junction, they dissipate a lot of energy.”The resistance results in heat pooling at the
junctions between the tubes, providing researchers with the perfect opportunity to
“solder” these connections using a material that reacts with heat to deposit metal
across the junctions. Once the current runs through, the deposited metal reduces
the junction resistance, effectively stopping the energy loss.
Lyding’s technique, which is transferable to conventional silicon transistor man-
ufacturing equipment, involves applying a thin layer of solution made from com-
pounds that contain the metal needed to solder the junctions together. “With [our]
method, you just send current through the nanotubes and that heats the junctions.
From there, chemistry occurs inside that layer, and then we’re done. You just have
to rinse it off,” Lyding said. “You don’t need a custom, expensive vacuum chamber.”
FACULTY PLAY KEY ROLE IN ENGINEERING-
OPHTHALMOLOGY INITIATIVE
Several MNTL faculty are involved in a new collaboration between the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sci-
ences and the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the College of Engineering in Urbana.
The Illinois Partnership for Ophthalmology Engineering will bring together vision scientists, clinicians, and engineers to
address important unsolved challenges in vision research. During 2015, MNTL faculty and staff helped organize two
meetings, where clinicians and doctors shared research interests and capabilities in retinal imaging, drug delivery, engi-
neered surfaces for medical implants, minimally invasive diagnostics, tissue engineering, sensors, and neural interfac-
es. As a result, the three key units have requested seed funding from the university administration, which will facilitate
the development of proposals to NSF, NIH, and DoD. In fact, an NSF NRT training grant letter of intent was submitted
to the funding agency in November, and three more major proposals are in development.
Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) are the semiconductor laser
workhorse of short-distance optical interconnects in data centers, server clus-
ters, the Internet infrastructure, and supercomputer applications. However, as
bandwidth demand increases and data centers grow larger, the optical inter-
connects will need to achieve high bandwidth over longer fiber-optic transmis-
sion distances, requiring VCSELs with narrow spectral width, sufficient output
power, and higher modulation efficiency.
ECE Professor Kent Choquette has developed multiple research strategies to
address these challenges. First, his research group has developed photonic
crystal VCSELs that exhibit record bandwidth distance performance by in-
corporating a periodic index profile to control the optical modes of the laser.
Second, his group has demonstrated a novel coherently coupled VCSEL array
structure that achieves both requirements by using monolithic feedback en-
hancement to create record high modulation bandwidth with a potential path
toward 100 Gb/s data rate. The photonic crystal VCSEL phased arrays are
also appropriate for other applications, such as electronic beam steering, high
brightness laser sources, and novel optical beam production.
NOVEL VCSEL DESIGNS
TO ENABLE HIGH-PERFORMANCE
OPTICAL TRANSMISSION
OF DIGITAL DATA
LASERS SHED LIGHT
ON INTERACTIONS BETWEEN
BIOLOGICAL MOLECULES
ECE Professor Gary Eden and his students have recently conducted stud-
ies that may provide a new way to observe interactions between biological
molecules. In one experiment, the group obtained laser action from several
biomolecules, demonstrating that their emission spectra and other optical
properties are sensitive to interactions of the lasing molecules with their en-
vironment.
Specifically, the group reported lasing from flavin mononucleotide, which is a
co-enzyme derived from Vitamin B2 (riboflavin). The laser spectrum and the
polarization of the laser radiation emitted by the biomolecules were shown
to be extraordinarily sensitive to the solvent, thus providing a powerful diag-
nostic of molecule-molecule interactions.
In related experiments, the team has shown that optical energy can be ex-
changed between two molecules that are connected by biotin-streptavidin, a
biological complex to which molecules, quantum dots, or nanoparticles can
be attached (“docked”) and separated by a precisely-known distance.
10. 18 MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 19
MNTL FACULTY AFFILIATES ELECTED
TO NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
Chemistry Professor Catherine Murphy and Materials Science Engineering Professor
John Rogers were elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2015. Murphy, who
is associate director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Lab (MRL) on campus,
works to develop inorganic nanomaterials for applications in biology and technology. Her
group develops methods to manufacture tiny nanorods made of metals such as gold,
silver and copper, and she investigates their uses for imaging cells, chemical sensing and
photothermal therapy. She also studies the environmental impact of nanoparticles and
how their properties influence their behavior.
Rogers, who is the director of the Frederick Seitz MRL, is a pioneer of flexible, stretchable
and transient electronics. He combines soft, stretchable materials with microscale and
nanoscale electronic components to create classes of devices with a wide range of prac-
tical applications from medicine to sensing to solar energy.
MNTL FACULTY RESEARCHER ELECTED TO NAE
ECE Professor J. Gary Eden was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, one
of the highest professional honors an engineer can receive. Eden, who uses lasers to
study how visible and ultraviolet light interact with matter, was honored for development
and commercialization of micro-plasma technologies and excimer lasers. His work has
led to advances in multiple areas of application. For example, excimer lasers, a class of
ultraviolet lasers Eden developed, are used industrially in semiconductor manufactur-
ing and clinically for eye surgeries. His work also has advanced such areas as ultrafast
spectroscopy, which uses laser pulses to study the interactions between atoms and mol-
ecules, and photochemical vapor deposition, which uses lasers to deposit thin films of
semiconductors and other materials on a surface.
FACULTY AWARDS
WITH MEMBERSHIP RATES BASED ON COMPANY SIZE AND LEVEL OF INTEREST, THE IAP
WILL ENABLE COMPANIES TO PARTNER WITH FACULTY ON PRE-COMPETITIVE RESEARCH
PROJECTS, PROVIDING A COST-EFFECTIVE APPROACH FOR GAINING INSIGHT INTO COM-
MERCIAL APPLICATIONS OF UNIVERSITY RESEARCH. THE IAP WILL ALSO DEVELOP AN
MNTL GRADUATE STUDENT INDUSTRY-RECRUITING PIPELINE, CONNECTING UNIQUELY
QUALIFIED STUDENTS WITH COMPANY INTERNSHIPS AND FULL-TIME JOBS.
INDUSTRY
AFFILIATES
PROGRAM
MNTL IS LAUNCHING A NEW INDUSTRY AFFILIATES PROGRAM (IAP)
IN 2016 TO FACILITATE TECHNICAL INTERACTIONS BETWEEN COMPANY
RESEARCHERS AND ILLINOIS FACULTY AND STUDENTS.
UNDERSTANDING THE
PHYSICS OF A NEW TYPE
OF PHOTONIC BIOSENSOR
A whispering gallery mode (WGM) resonator is a miniature optical device that re-
circulates light. A biosensor can be made by functionalizing a WGM device and
looking for small changes in its resonance wavelengths due to binding events of
chemicals and biological agents. However, the device’s effectiveness is hampered
by its inability to detect very small concentrations of analytes.
ECE Associate Professor Lynford Goddard and his students have conducted
simulations to explain the fundamental physics of a new type of WGM biosen-
sor that incorporates gold nanoparticles around the circumference of the WGM
waveguide. The nanoparticles form a plasmonic chain ring resonator (PCRR), a
structure that experiences a collective oscillation in the presence of light.
The integrated WGM-PCRR biosensor creates a wavelength shift that is a few or-
ders of magnitude larger than the conventional WGM biosensor because of the
way that light is localized in the PCRR for specific sizes and spacings of nanopar-
ticles. The enhanced sensitivity should enable the detection of a single binding
event of a small protein such as a Thyroglobulin cancer marker protein.
11. 20 MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 21
Holonyak created the world’s first visible red LED in 1962 while working at General
Electric. Although most researchers at the time were trying to make light-emitters from
gallium arsenide, which produces infra-red light, Holonyak made his visible LED from
an unconventional mixture of gallium, arsenide, and phosphide (GaAsP)—an alloy that
underpins all high-brightness LEDs made today.
In 1972, Craford invented the first yellow LED and increased its brightness by adding
nitrogen to Holonyak’s GaAsP LED. Craford also participated in the development pro-
cesses for the first large-scale commercial production of red LEDs. In the years after-
ward, Craford led work that resulted in the first high-brightness yellow and red LEDs,
available in 1992, and later contributed to the development of high-power white LEDs.
Dupuis developed and refined a process called metal organic chemical vapor depo-
sition (MOCVD) in 1977, which enabled production of high-brightness LEDs. Dupuis’
MOCVD growth technology is the basis of virtually all production of high-brightness
LEDs, laser diodes, solar cells, and high-speed optoelectronic (light controlling) devices.
ILLINOIS LED PIONEERS
RECEIVE MOST PRESTIGIOUS
U.S. ENGINEERING AWARD
ECE Professor Emeritus Nick Holonyak Jr. and two of his former students, George
Craford and Russ Dupuis, were awarded the 2015 Charles Stark Draper Prize for
Engineering. They shared the prize with Isamu Akasaki and Shuji Nakamura for
the invention, development, and commercialization of materials and processes for
light-emitting diodes (LEDs).
LEDs are used by billions of people on a daily basis through applications like computer
monitors, cellphone screens, TVs, traffic lights, home lighting, digital watch displays,
medical applications, and many more. In third-world areas without electricity, LEDs
combined with solar cells are bringing light to people who’d previously relied on fire
and kerosene lamps. The $33 billion LED industry has stimulated global job growth
and dramatically lowered the cost of energy.
In 2012 alone, more than 49 million LEDs were installed in the U.S., with an estimat-
ed annual savings of $675 million in energy costs. In 2013, LEDs in general lighting
applications saw a rapid growth, saving the U.S. more than 12 million tons of CO2
emissions. LEDs also produce the greatest amount of light for the energy used, and
have the longest lifetime of any lighting source available.
NICK HOLONYAK, JR.
RUSS DUPUIS
GEORGE CRAFORD
12. 22 MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 23
FACULTY AWARDS
ILESANMI ADESIDA has been selected to receive the 2016 Functional Materials
John Bardeen Award presented by the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society for his
contributions to and leadership in the electronic materials field.
JEAN PAUL ALLAIN was selected as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Colombia and
awarded the 2015-2016 Fulbright–Colciencias Innovation and Technology Award. He
will conduct research with collaborators from the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellin
aimed at developing functional nanomaterials for biotechnology and energy applica-
tions through multiple short-term visits to this country.
RASHID BASHIR was elected a Fellow of the International Academy of Medical Bi-
ological Engineering (IAMBE) and the BiomedicalEngineering Society (BMES) in 2015.
Bashir’s research interests include bionanotechnology, biomicroelectromechanical
systems, laboratory on a chip, interfacing biology and engineering from molecular to
tissue scale, and applications of semiconductor fabrication to biomedical engineering.
CAN BAYRAM received the 2014 IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS) Early Career
Award—one of EDS’s highest honors—for his early career technical achievements. Be-
fore joining the Illinois faculty in 2015, Bayram was a post-doctoral researcher at IBM’s
T.J. Watson Research Center where he developed thin-film LEDs. At MNTL, Bayram
is developing a novel, vertical LED architecture for biological and solid-state lighting
applications.
KENT CHOQUETTE was elected president of the IEEE Photonics Society, a role that he
begins in 2016. As president, Choquette aims to improve the way research is released
to the public, making it less expensive and more quickly accessible for researchers.
ECE PROFESSOR EMERITUS JIM COLEMAN received a 2015 University of Illinois
Electrical Computer Engineering Distinguished Alumni award for research accom-
plishments in the field of compound semiconductor crystal growth, teaching, and ser-
vice. A faculty member for 31 years, Coleman retired in 2013. He is currently an electri-
cal engineering faculty member at the University of Texas at Dallas. In 2014, Coleman
was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
BRIAN CUNNINGHAM was invested as Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineer-
ing, recognizing his intellectual leadership and outstanding research. Cunningham is
internationally recognized for his contributions to the advancement of photonic crys-
tal-based biosensing. He was also selected as a 2014 Fellow of the Optical Society
of America for the invention, development, and commercialization of biosensors and
detection instrumentation based on nanostructured surfaces and for the development
of biological applications.
JOHN DALLESASSE was elected a 2015 IEEE Fellow for contributions to the oxida-
tion process of III-V semiconductors used in photonic device manufacturing.
GARY EDEN was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors, a distinction ac-
corded to academic inventors. Eden has more than 70 patents, including several that
he’s licensed to two start-up companies he co-founded—Eden Park Illumination and
EP Purification.
MATTHEW GILBERT received a 2014 NSF CAREER award—one of the agency’s most
prestigious awards for junior faculty. Gilbert will use the research funding to determine
the potential of topological materials to make information processing systems by un-
derstanding the light-matter interactions and high-frequency responses in topological
nanosystems.
SONGBIN GONG received a prestigious 2014 DARPA Young Faculty award for a
concept that aims to develop an integrated circuit design that replaces conventional
CMOS transistor technology. Specifically, he aims to develop a system that dissipates
very little energy as waste heat, and which can recover and reuse the most of the heat
as additional energy.
NICK HOLONYAK JR. received the University of Illinois Alumni Achievement Award
for pioneering and world-renowned achievements in optoelectronics. The inventor of
the first practical semiconductor LED and laser, Holonyak earned three electrical engi-
neering degrees from Illinois (BS 1950, MS 1951, PhD 1954), conducting his doctoral
research under two-time Nobel laureate John Bardeen.
XIULING LI, JIANJUN CHENG, AND JOHN ROGERS were selected as the first
class of College of Engineering Faculty Entrepreneurial Fellows to develop technology
and test its commercial applications. Li also received a Donald Biggar Willett Faculty
Scholar award, which recognizes mid-career College of Engineering faculty who excel
in their contributions to the university. An Illinois faculty member since 2007, Li’s re-
search is focused on nanostructured semiconductor materials and devices.
LOGAN LIU was elected a 2015 Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Bi-
ological Engineering (AIMBE) for contributions to biomolecular sensing and imaging
nanotechnology, enabling new medical and environmental health research and appli-
cations.
WILLIAM KING was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2014 for
distinguished contributions to the applied physics of nanometer-scale thermal and
mechanical property measurements, and the translation of this work to numerous ap-
plications in materials science and nanotechnology.
JOE LYDING received the 2014 Foresight Institute Feynman Prize for experimental
work for his pioneering work in the development of scanning tunneling microscope
(STM) technology. Lyding is also known for developing hydrogen depassivation li-
thography, a generic patterning technique using a resist that allows pattern transfer
to enable many different types of structures and functionalization of surfaces, all while
maintaining atomic resolution and precision. Lyding was also elected a 2014 Fellow of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science for distinguished contribu-
tions in nanotechnology and discovery of the giant deuterium isotope effect.
GABRIEL POPESCU was selected as a 2015 Optical Society/OSA Fellow for novel
quantitative nanoscale phase imaging of cells and tissues. Popescu’s group develops
novel optical methods based on light scattering, interferometry, and microscopy, to
image cells and tissues quantitatively and with nanoscale sensitivity.
ADESIDA GONG
LI
CHENG
ROGERS
ALLAIN
BASHIR
DALLESASSE
13. 24 MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 25
Rashid Bashir, Massachusetts General Hospital, A Microflu-
idic Biochip to Perform Complete Blood Cell Count at Point of
Care, April 2015—April 2016, $145,000.
Kent Choquette, NSF, Optical Phased Laser Arrays and Their
Functionality, September 2015—August 2018, $350,000.
Brian Cunningham, Brendan Harley, and Mary Kraft, Nation-
al Institute of Biomedical Imaging Bioengineering, Label
Free Interrogation of Heterogeneties in HSC Fate Decision Sig-
natures, April 2015—January 2017, $193,000.
Brian Cunningham, NSF, Multiresonator Photonic Crystal
Enhanced Fluorescence and SERS, May 2015—April 2018,
$600,000. A collaboration with Washington University in St.
Louis.
Brian Cunningham, Rashid Bashir, Steve Lumetta, and Ian
Brooks, NSF, Pathtracker: A smartphone-based system for
mobile infectious disease detection and epidemiology, Sep-
tember 2015, $1,000,000.
Brian Cunningham, NIH, Rapid Disease Diagnostics using
Photonic Crystal Enhanced Antigen Biomarker,
June 2014—May 2018, $448,000.
Brian Cunningham, NSF, Multiresonator Photonic Crystal
Enhanced Fluorescence and SERS, May 2015—April 2018,
$600,000. A collaboration with Washington University in St.
Louis.
John Dallesasse Brian Cunningham, NSF, EAGER: Lab in a
Smartphone Sept, Sept. 2014—Aug. 2016, $300,000.
John Dallesasse, NSF, Transistor Injected Quantum Cascade
Laser: An Improved Coherent Mid-IR Source, Aug. 2014—July
2017, $400,000.
Gary Eden, II-VI Foundation, Microplasma Array-Pumped
Waveguide Lasers, July 2014—June 2015, $95,000.
Gary Eden, AFOSR, Synthesis and Control of Coherent Struc-
tures in Low-Temperature Plasmas for Reconfigurable Electro-
magnetic Devices, $412,000.
Gary Eden, AFOSR, Plasma-chemical Synthesis and Prob-
ing of Plasma-Surface Interactions in Microcavity Plasmas,
$301,000.
Gary Eden, AFOSR, Laser and Gas Chromatography Systems
for Studies of Excited Molecular Complexes and Phased Ar-
rays of Microlasers, dates, $918,000.
Milton Feng, Army Research Office, Bit Error Rate Test Equip-
ment for High-Speed Vertical Cavity Transistor Laser-Micro-
cavity VCSEL and Photoreceiver, Sept. 2014—Aug. 2015,
$200,000.
Milton Feng, AFOSR, Complex Material and Devices RTD GHz
– THz Electronics, March 2015—February 2018, $657,000.
Matthew Gilbert, NSF CAREER award, Global Quantum Mod-
eling of Topological Nanosystems for Energy-Efficient Devic-
es, June 2014—May 2019, $400,000.
Matthew Gilbert, ONR, High-Frequency Topological Nanosys-
tems, $314,000.
Lynford Goddard, NSF, Spectrally and Temporally Engineered
Processing Using PhotoElectroChemistry (STEP-PEC), June
2015—May 2018, $370,000.
Songbin Gong, DARPA, Resonance Enhanced Authentication
Communication and Charging Reach, Jan. 2015—July 2016,
$525,000.
Songbin Gong, DARPA, Parametrically Excited Resonant
Computing Systems (PERCS), $250,000.
Xiuling Li, NSF, Programmable Metal-Assisted Chemical
Etching for Three Dimensional Functional Metamaterials, May
2015—April 2018, $180,000. A collaborative project with the
University of Texas-Arlington.
Xiuling Li and Lynford Goddard, NSF, Research Experience
for Teachers, May 2014—April 2017, $500,000.
Catherine Murphy, NSF, Summer Nanotechnology Research
Experience for Undergraduates, March 2014—March 2017,
$375,000.
Klara Nahrstedt and Brian Cunningham, NSF, Timely and
Trusted Curator and Coordinator Data Building Blocks, Octo-
ber 2014 – September 2017, $1,500,000.
Dan Wasserman, NSF, EAGER: Novel Approaches for Gener-
ating and Controlling Light in the Optical No Man’s Land of the
Far IR, June 2014—Nov. 2015, $112,000.
FUNDAMNTL
RESEARCH FUNDING
14. 26 MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 27
OUR RESEARCHERS ARE PART OF AN HISTORIC SEMICONDUCTOR LEGACY THAT
BEGAN WITH ENGINEERING GIANTS JOHN BARDEEN, NICK HOLONYAK JR., AND
CHIH-TANG SAH, WHOSE GROUNDBREAKING WORK HELPED LAUNCH AND AD-
VANCE TODAY’S INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION. THEY AND THEIR
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING COLLEAGUES FROM THE STORIED ELECTRICAL ENGI-
NEERING RESEARCH LAB—THE PRECURSOR TO THE MICRO NANOTECHNOLOGY
LAB—SET A STANDARD OF EXCELLENCE THAT TODAY’S FACULTY STRIVE TO
MEET. WE PROUDLY INTRODUCE THREE NEW FACULTY.
WENJUAN ZHU is identifying the unique electronic and photonic properties of 2D mate-
rials and fabricating nanoscale devices. She and her students are taking advantage of the
high carrier mobility of metallic 2D materials like graphene to build plasmonic devices and
solar cells with transparent electrodes. For semiconducting 2D materials, such as MoS2
and WSe2, they are making sub-10nm transistors for computing. Zhu and her group are
also combining 2D materials with traditional semiconducting materials and exploring their
applications in computation, communications, energy, and medical areas.
Before joining the Illinois faculty in August 2014, Zhu spent 11 years at IBM, where she
made key contributions to the 65 nm and 32 nm CMOS technology and explored the fun-
damental properties of 2D materials like graphene and layered transition metal dichalco-
genides (LTMD) and made devices and circuits.
CAN BAYRAM is developing efficient, high-power compact ultra-violet AlGaInN LEDs to
detect and eliminate biological agents like anthrax, plague, and ebola, and may be used to
enable clean drinking water in underdeveloped areas. He and his students are also creat-
ing light sources that are tunable from UV to visible (200-750nm) wavelengths for general
lighting, visualization, and biological applications. In the electronics area, he and his group
are creating GaN-based transistors for next generation power transistors.
Before joining the Illinois faculty in August 2014, Bayram spent three years at IBM, where
he was part of the team that developed a record-breaking specific power solar cell, which
was featured on the cover of Advanced Energy Materials in May 2013. Bayram also created
a technique to grow GaN material that is compatible with conventional CMOS fabrication
technology.
AREND VAN DER ZANDE, who joined the Illinois faculty in August 2015, is investigating
the properties of 2-dimensional (2D) materials and building novel devices from them. While
his group has grown isolated layers of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), their goal is to grow
large-scale uniform MoS2 and other 2D materials. They’ve begun building a metal-organic
chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) system at MNTL that can produce uniform 2D mate-
rials on four-inch wafers.
Van der Zande earned his doctorate in physics at Cornell University. He spent four years
as a post-doctoral researcher at Columbia University, where he isolated and engineered
the first graphene mechanical membrane. Because of its strength and flexibility, he and
colleagues were able to build nanomechanical systems like electrostatically tunable drum-
head resonators and impermeable gas membranes.
TRAINING THE
NEXT GENERATION
OF SEMICONDUCTOR
BIOMEDICAL
LEADERS
THROUGHOUT ITS 25-YEAR HISTORY, MNTL HAS TRAINED AND EDU-
CATED MORE THAN 1,100 STUDENTS SO THEY ARE PREPARED FOR CA-
REERS IN INDUSTRY, ACADEMIA, AND GOVERNMENT IN THE AREAS OF
PHOTONICS, MICROELECTRONICS, BIOTECHNOLOGY, AND NANOTECH-
NOLOGY. WE PROUDLY INTRODUCE YOU TO SEVERAL OF OUR STU-
DENTS WHO REPRESENT THE EXCEPTIONAL CALIBER OF OUR YOUNG
RESEARCHERS.
A member of Professor Xiuling Li’s group, ECE doctoral student PAUL FROETER is
growing III-V semiconductors and insulators via Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Phase
Deposition (MOCVD) and Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition, respectively, to
make Self-rolled-up Membranes (S-RuM). These membranes can self-assemble into 3D
structures through controlled strain relaxation.
Froeter’s research opened routes to realizing miniaturized RF components, biocompati-
ble interfaces, and high-quality optical components. He has integrated a silicon nitride
membrane into his S-RuMs (SiNx S-RuMs) and developed the first fully insulating, opti-
cally transparent, and biocompatible rolled-up platform available to Li’s group. In collab-
oration with a University of Wisconsin colleague, Froeter later discovered that their SiNx
S-RuMs exhibited exceptional neuronal outgrowth guidance in cortical neuron cultures.
Currently, Froeter is collaborating with Illinois Professors Martha Gillette and Rashid
Bashir, as well as Wisconsin Professor Justin Williams, to develop cell-triggered, S-RuMs,
in which the cellular traction force exerted on the membrane overwhelms stiction hold-
ing it to the substrate. Their goal is to dynamically self-assemble large networks of cells
while being able to fully functionalize the inner wall of the micro tube.
A finalist for the $20,000 Illinois Innovation Prize from the College of Engineering Tech-
nology Entrepreneur Center (TEC) in 2014, Froeter is most proud of introducing a biology
component into his research group, which had previously focused on electrical and opti-
cal applications. “I would not be where I am without the MNTL facilities and the faculty
and staff that keeps it running,” said Froeter. “I have been able to accomplish the work I
set out, make friends with the staff, and explore collaborations I did not see possible.”
OUR
NEWEST
FACULTY
15. 28 MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 29
ECE doctoral student GLORIA SEE came to the University of Illinois after working in
testing at BAE Systems and the Air Force Research Labs. As a member of Professor
Brian Cunningham’s group, See is conducting research using photonic crystals to en-
hance quantum dot (QD) performance. By developing new methods to control polar-
ization, intensity, and angular output, QDs can be used for improved performance in
large-area displays.
See recently published research results where she successfully embedded QDs in
novel polymer materials that retain strong quantum efficiency, and she used electro-
hydrodynamic jet (e-jet) printing technology to precisely print the QD-embedded poly-
mers onto photonic crystal structures. This research may enable the fabrication of
brighter, cheaper, and more efficient displays.
Currently, See is being funded by Dow Chemical to build upon her novel device struc-
ture and investigate how the integration of photonic crystals into a MEMS device
can produce different methods of controlling QD-output. “I’m really proud of the last
paper that I published, because I don’t think it was very obvious that that structure
would be as effective as we made it,” said See, who graduated in December 2015.
“The [Illinois] faculty and staff are amazing. There hasn’t been anybody who I’ve asked
for help that has not gone way out of their way to be very helpful, or to connect
me with someone who would be better to help me out. That kind of community is a
great thing to have.”
CURTIS WANG’S interest in research began several years ago when he joined Profes-
sor Milton Feng’s group as an undergraduate research assistant, exploring microwave
integrated circuits. As a graduate student, Wang’s research has focused on the tran-
sistor laser, a high-speed, 3-terminal device that his advisor co-invented with Profes-
sor Nick Holonyak Jr. in 2004.
The transistor laser functions like a normal transistor, except that one of its outputs is
infrared light rather than electricity, which could enable next-generation military and
consumer optoelectronic applications. More recently, Wang used MNTL’s state-of-the-
art high-speed measurement equipment to characterize his colleagues’ Vertical Cavi-
ty Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL), which achieved 52-gigabit/second error-free
transmission—a new record.
In the spring of 2015, Wang received a prestigious National Defense Science and En-
gineering Graduate (NDSEG) fellowship from the Department of Defense, which are
awarded to only 200 promising graduate students nationwide each year. According to
Wang, this fellowship allows him to not only pursue the device physics, layout, design,
and fabrication of high-speed semiconductor lasers, but also the application of ul-
tra-fast data transfer and real-time imaging. “Especially, I am passionate about the
new frontiers that the transistor laser can bring forth in the thriving Internet-of-every-
thing age.”
RUOCHEN LU, a second-year electrical engineering graduate student in Songbin
Gong’s group, is designing novel RF transformers based on two-port resonators.
Some of the biggest challenges he faces relate to the parasitic capacitance inherent
to electrical circuits. This unavoidable stray capacitance exists in all circuits due to the
close proximity of components that can then cause interference and unreliable oper-
ation.
In the summer of 2015, Lu earned a best poster finalist honor at the 18th Internation-
al Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems (Transducers
2015) for his work on a novel numerical approach to model the thermal nonlinearity in
piezoelectric micro-resonators, which are commonly found in the transceivers of
modern wireless systems. His approach uses an approximation-free algorithm that
more accurately accounts for the complex non-linear dynamics found in MEMS reso-
nators. Lu also won the Electrical Computer Department’s Lam Outstanding Gradu-
ate Student Research Award.
A graduate of Tsinghua University in China, Lu describes his doctoral experience at
MNTL as amazing because of the great facilities and research collaborations. “The
faculty and local research groups are very close,” Lu said. “We often discuss different
research topics and learn a lot from each other.”
Mechanical Science Engineering doctoral student RITU RAMAN, who works with
Professors Rashid Bashir and Taher Saif, has built a high-resolution 3D printer for
patterning cells and biomaterials with resolutions on the order of single cells—less
than 5 micron patterning. Working with other members of her group, she has also
engineered BioBots, or 3D printed skeletons and muscle actuators, that have been
induced to contract by both electrical and optical stimulation.
Interested in commercializing this technology, Raman won the 2015 Illinois Innova-
tion Prize, a campus-wide student entrepreneur competition. She is using the $15,000
prize to manufacture the biological building blocks, or BioBlocks, required for the Bio-
Bots. The BioBlocks can harness the innate abilities of biological materials to sense,
process, and respond to a variety of dynamic environmental signals in real time.
Raman’s achievements extend beyond the laboratory. In the Fall 2015 semester, she
created and taught a new Bioengineering class (BIOE306), where students learn how
to design and build their own BioBots. “I’m really proud of this because all the cool
stuff I’m learning doesn’t mean anything if I’m the only one that can do it,” she said. “I
want to introduce those materials into every engineer’s toolbox.”
According to Raman, some of her success can be attributed to the collaborative envi-
ronment at Illinois. “You have access to everything and you are always going to find
someone who is an expert in what you’re doing. I write better and more in-depth pa-
pers because I get so much help from other people.”
TRAINING THE NEXT GENERATION OF
SEMICONDUCTOR BIOMEDICAL LEADERS
16. 30 MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 31
MNTL
KNOWLEDGE
EXPERTISE
IMPACTS
THE WORLD
KNOWLEDGE
TRANSFER
AT ALL LEVELS
The education, training, and outreach efforts at MNTL are conducted by the Center for Nanoscale Sci-
ence Technology, which resides in MNTL. CNST Executive Director Irfan Ahmad, an Agricultural Bio-
logical Engineering Professor, and his staff manage educational programs that impact K-12, undergradu-
ate, and graduate students, as well as young researchers from academia, industry, and government labs.
For example, CNST hosts annual nanotechnology workshops and symposia, highlighting the outstand-
ing and innovative research being conducted at MNTL and other laboratories on campus. These forums
attract students, postdocs, faculty, university administrators, members of the public, and researchers
from industry, government labs, and federal agencies. The following events are also managed by CNST.
MNTL TAKES LEADERSHIP
ROLE IN FOOD SAFETY
Aware of MNTL’s expertise in sensing technology, the National Science Foundation invited
MNTL faculty and staff to lead an international workshop on food safety and expanding the
world’s food supply, which took place in Arlington, VA, in October 2014. Seventy industry, gov-
ernment, and academic experts in the field of global food safety identified the most pressing
gaps in the food safety infrastructure. This workshop has led to research investments by NSF
that impact fundamental new approaches in sensing, take advantage of the emerging capabil-
ities of “big data” networks for managing traceability within global supply chains, and incorpo-
rate new capabilities into food processing equipment and packaging. In addition to co-hosting
the event, MNTL Director Cunningham presented his group’s research progress on developing
microfluidic technologies that can be incorporated into inexpensive plastic cartridges that in-
terface with a smartphone or tablet to perform common quality control tests in the field.
MNTL also co-hosted the October 2014 invitation-only Nanosensor Networks and Exabyte
Analysis Farm to Fork workshop in Urbana, where thought leaders from industry, academia,
and government discussed the development of new technologies in order to feed the world’s 9
billion people over the next 40 years. Participants addressed how to develop and apply a new
class of sensing modalities, which can provide detailed and distributed information about
chemical components, protein makeup, pathogen presence, plant metabolism, and pest inva-
sion, combined with environmental monitoring, that has not been available previously. Already
advancements in nanoscale sensors are achieving unprecedented levels of sensitivity and
specificity. Nanoplasmonics, silicon-based sensors, nanopores, flexible/printable optoelectron-
ics, biodegradable photonic resonators, and protein‐based nanoparticle image contrast agents
all offer the potential for robustness and cost that may enable researchers to produce broadly
distributed arrays of miniature sensors and mobile detection instruments to increase farm ef-
ficiency and food safety.
17. 32 MNTL RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 33
NANOBIOTECHNOLOGY SUMMER INSTITUTE
More than 50 students, post-docs, and junior faculty from around the world participated in
the 2014 + 2015 University of Illinois BioNanotechnology Summer Institutes, learning about
cancer nanotechnology, cell mechanics, molecular biology, micro nano fabrication tech-
niques, and microfluidics. Since its inception in 2009, the Institute has trained more than
300 participants, preparing the next-generation of researchers who can apply engineering
approaches to cancer and biomedical research.
BRADLEY ELLIS
SENIOR, UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
Why did you choose to attend the Summer Institute?
I wanted to get a jump-start on graduate school.
What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned so far?
Probably how different disciplines work together, just this week we
learned how materials science concepts work together with electri-
cal engineering processes for applications in medicine.
What are your plans after the Summer Institute?
I want to continue on into academia, get into exciting research, and
eventually teach as a professor.
HUMA RASHEED
RESEARCH SCHOLAR, AMPLITECH, INC.
Why did you choose to attend the Summer Institute?
The summer institute offers instruction on applying advanced technolo-
gy into biology and other sciences, like nanomedicine.
What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned so far?
I have a pharmacology background and am most interested in micro
cell biology and encapsulated drug delivery. There have been a series of
lectures on the applications of nanoparticles in curing cancer that I have
found very valuable.
What are your plans after the summer institute?
I want to take some of the advanced techniques I have learned here,
back to my native field of targeted drug therapy and pharmacology.
STEM TEACHERS ENHANCE THEIR INSTRUCTION
THROUGH RESEARCH AT MNTL
During the last two summers, 16 middle school, high school, and community
college STEM faculty from across the nation conducted cutting-edge research
in nanotechnology through the NSF-funded nano@Illinois Research Experience
for Teachers (RET) program at MNTL. The goal of RET is to provide the teachers
with hands-on experience and nanotechnology knowledge, which they can use to
enhance their classroom instruction and even develop a curriculum module.
“I teach in a very small school with limited resources, so one of the best things
that I can do is have experiences and then bring them back to the classroom,” said
Villa Grove, IL, biology teacher Aubrey Wachtel, who worked in Professor Andrew
Smith’s lab on the quantitative analysis of cellular uptake of quantum dots. Added
fellow 2014 participant Terry Koker: ““My work in Dr. Goddard’s lab on photoelec-
trochemical etching of silicon was one of the most rewarding educational and
scientific experiences of my career.”
In addition to Smith and Goddard, faculty participants included Alekei Aksimentiev
(Physics), Can Bayram (ECE), Paul Braun (MatSci), Songbin Gong (ECE), Princess
Imoukhuede (BioE), Xiuling Li (ECE), Nadya Mason (Physics), Umberto Ravaioli
(ECE), Steve Sligar (BioChem), Andrew Smith (BioE), and Dan Wasserman (ECE).
UNDERGRADUATES GAIN VALUABLE
RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
Twenty-six undergraduate students from across the nation conducted 10-week re-
search projects through CNST’s NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergrad-
uates program and the NSF-funded Science and Technology Center for Emergent
Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems (EBICS) at MNTL. In addition to introduc-
ing the students to research, the REU program trains them in critical elements of
leadership, ethics, teamwork, mentoring, and outreach, and it improves their ability
to communicate their research results to professional and lay audiences.
“This REU gave me the opportunity to develop professional skills, improve my re-
search writing, and synthesize devices all in one summer,” noted 2014 student
Mohammad Jaber.
The following faculty served as mentors to the undergraduate students: Aleksei
Aksimentiev (Physics), Ryan Bailey (Chem), Rashid Bashir (BioE), Rohit Bharga-
va (BioE), Paul Braun (MatSci), Brian Cunningham (ECE), Lynford Goddard (ECE),
Brendan Harley (Chem Biomolecular Engr), Princess Imoukhuede (BioE), Hyun-
joon Kong (Chem Biomolecular Engr), Mary Kraft (Chemistry), Xiuling Li (ECE), Yi
Lu (Chemistry), Catherine Murphy (Chemistry), Sungwoo Nam (MechSci Engr),
Gabriel Popescu (ECE), Taher Saif (MechSci Engr), Sameh Tawfick (MechSci
Engr), and Dan Wasserman (ECE).
18. ILLINOIS MICRO + NANOTECHNOLOGY LAB
MICRO + NANOTECHNOLOGY LAB
University of Illinois
208 N. Wright Street
Urbana, IL 61801
PH 217.333.3097
MNTL.ILLINOIS.EDU
