The Nano Age is upon us! With nano-scale advancements, we are reimagining Health and Life Sciences, Energy, Computing, Information Technology, Manufacturing, Quantum Science…and that is because nano is not a specific technology. It does not belong to a particular industry or discipline. It is, rather, a revolutionary way of understanding and working with matter, and it is the key to launching the next Innovation Age, the Nano Age.
Tools to build the Nano Age can be found at the heart of MIT campus, inside a comprehensive, 20,000-square-meter shared facility for nano-scale. MIT.nano designed to give researchers and innovators access to a broad and versatile toolsets that can do more – from imaging to synthesis, fabbing, and prototyping – entirely within the facility’s protective envelope. Opening of MIT.nano in October 2018 also marked the beginning of a new era of nano-education at MIT, with handson learning spaces and advanced teaching tools integrated throughout the facility. On the top floor of MIT.nano, a versatile suite of prototyping labs is further designed to support incubation and initial growth of start-up-companies. There, inventors can translate nano-scale advancements into hand-held systems, transitioning academic pursuits into prototypes for a better World. Quantifying and analyzing technology translations from MIT.nano will give insights into the steps comprising the innovation process, which we expect will enable us to transform the mere art of innovation into a systematic science. Knowledge and insights gained, MIT.nano is committed to share broadly so we can accelerate the advancements of the Nano Age through both act and deed.
In his talk, Bulovic will describe the latest works of MIT’s campus discoveries. He will share his vision for the innovation journeys in the labs and galleries of MIT.nano, shaped to deliver breakthrough solutions and spur public narratives that can define our time.
Whereas human tissues and organs are mostly soft, wet and bioactive; machines are commonly hard, dry and biologically inert. Merging humans, machines and their intelligence is of imminent importance in addressing grand societal challenges in health, sustainability, security, education and joy of living. However, interfacing humans and machines is extremely challenging due to their fundamentally contradictory properties. At MIT Zhao Lab, we exploit soft materials technology to form long-term, high-efficacy, multi-modal interfaces and convergence between humans and machines. In this talk, I will first discuss the mechanics to design extreme properties including tough, resilient, adhesive, strong, fatigue-resistant and conductive for hydrogels, which are ideal material candidates for human-machine interfaces. Then I will discuss a set of soft materials technology platforms, including i). bioadhesives for instant strong adhesion of diverse wet dynamic tissues and machines; ii). bioelectronics for long-term multi-modal neural interfaces; iii). biorobots for teleoperated and autonomous navigations and operations in previously inaccessible lesions such as in cerebral and coronary arteries. I will conclude the talk with a perspective on future human-machine convergence enabled by soft materials technology.
- CATALOG: DNA for data storage & computation - TetraScience: Streamlined R&D lab workflows with data integration - 2D Materials: High performance graphene for industrial materials performance - GTL Biofuel Inc.: Sustainable liquid fuels & protein from alternative sources - Manus Robotics: Wearable robotic grippers to enable
We will summarize our recent work on the development of materials, reactors and systems for clean energy including carbon capture, water splitting and CO2 reuse. Oxy-combustion is an efficient carbon capture technology that requires high efficiency air separation, we will show how using metal oxides/pervoskites in the form of ion-transport membrane enables the integration of air separation and fuel oxidation. Integrated with gasification, it can be applied to coal. Similar materials can be used but with different elements and catalysts for water splitting using intermediate temperature heat, CO2 reduction as well as the conversion of natural gas to chemicals feedstock.
Microfluidic devices offer unique capabilities to control and manipulate biomolecules and cells, which can be utilized to enhance the efficiency of conventional biomanufacturing processes, as well as to advance novel therapeutic modalities such as cell therapy. In this presentation, I will showcase several examples where high-volume processing microfluidic systems are used for increasing efficiencies for perfusion bioreactor, monitoring product quality in real time at line, and detect low-abundance adventitious agents for enhancing overall safety.
This talk will present some of our recent work on advanced materials and systems at the energy and water nexus, including thermoelectric and thermogalvanic materials and systems for direct conversion of heat into electricity, high thermal conductivity semiconductors and polymers, optically opaque and infrared transparent fabrics, clean water technologies, and grid level energy storage systems. Thermoelectric materials have seen significant improvements over last two decades, but innovations are needed to develop their applications since their heat-to-electricity conversion efficiencies are still limited. In addition, electrochemical systems such as batteries can also be used to convert heat into electricity, which could be especially attractive for low temperature waste heat recovery. Although thermoelectric energy conversion calls for low thermal conductivity materials, many other applications require high thermal conductivity materials. We are developing materials with high thermal conductivity ranging from semiconductors to polymers, including BAs which has second highest thermal conductivity behind diamond. As another example, we show that polymers can be made as thermally conductive as metals by aligning molecular orientations despite that they start with low thermal conductivity. After these examples, we turn attention to energy and water technologies based on engineering thermal radiation. With properly chosen polymer fiber diameters, we design fabrics so that they are opaque to visible light and yet allow thermal radiation from human body to escape to environment for passively cooling of human body. We also demonstrate the ability of boiling water and even creating super-heated steam under unconcentrated sunlight. The talk will conclude with a discussion of a novel approach to grid level energy storage.
Will future of smart lighting and window coatings enable energy-efficient cooling in smart buildings? Can printed color converters lead to next generation micro displays with high brightness, sharp image resolution, and ultra low-power consumption? Recently, exciting new physics of nanoscale optical materials has inspired a series of key explorations to manipulate, store and control the flow of information and energy at unprecedented dimensions. In this talk I will report our recent efforts on controlling light harvesting and conversion process using scalable micro/nanofabrication. These emerging optical materials show promise to a range of important applications, from optical networks and chip-scale photonic sensors to lasers, LEDs, and solar technology.
For example, pixelated color converters are envisioned to achieve full-color high-resolution display through down conversion of blue micro-LEDs. Quantum dots (QDs) are promising narrow-band converters of high quantum efficiency and brightness enabling saturated colors. However, challenges still remain to produce high resolution color-selective patterns compatible with the advanced blue micro-LEDs with pitch and pixel size approaching 1 µm. Here we demonstrate our preliminary study on scalable printing of high-resolution pixelated red and green color converters patterned through projection lithography. I will also discuss potential applications such as high-resolution wide-gamut microdisplay for mixed reality and high speed visible light communication.
In this talk, I will also introduce versatile 3D shape transformations of nanoscale structures by deliberate engineering of the topography-guided stress of gold nanostructures. By using the topography-guided stress equilibrium, rich 3D shape transformation such as buckling, rotation, and twisting of nanostructures is precisely achieved, which can be predicted by our mechanical modeling. Benefiting from the nanoscale 3D twisting features, giant optical chirality is achieved in an intuitively designed 3D pinwheel-like structure, in strong contrast to the achiral 2D precursor without nano-kirigami. The demonstrated nano-kirigami, as well as the exotic 3D nanostructures, could be adopted in broad nanofabrication platforms and could open up new possibilities for the exploration of functional micro-/nanophotonic and mechanical devices.