Researchers from the Nanooptics and the Nanodevices groups at CIC nanoGUNE (Basque Country) in collaboration with colleagues at ICFO - The Institute of Photonic Sciences (Catalunya) have imaged how light moves inside an exotic class of matter known as hyperbolic materials. They observed, for the first time, ultraslow pulse propagation and backward propagating waves in deep subwavelength-scale thick slabs of boron nitride – a natural hyperbolic material for infrared light. This work has been funded by the EC Graphene Flagship and was recently reported in Nature Photonics and highlighted as a News&Views.

NanoGUNE offers a nanotechnology introductory course to high-school science and technology teachers in the framework of the Prest Gara program of the Department of Education, Language Policy, and Culture of the Basque Government. The lessons will take place in November and December 2015.

Systems allowing label-free molecular-level detection are expected to have enormous impact on biochemical sciences. Research focuses on materials and technologies based on exploiting the coupling of light with electronic charge oscillations, the so-called localized surface plasmon resonances, in metallic nanostructured antennas. The reason for this focused attention is their suitability for single-molecule sensing, arising from the intrinsically nanoscopic sensing volume and the high sensitivity to the local environment. Usually the metals used to build such nanoantennas are gold or silver. To couple light effectively into localized plasmons with ferromagnetic metals like nickel or cobalt was for a long time considered in practice impossible.

NanoGUNE’s TechTransfer Manager, Miryam Asunción, analyzes the Basque industrial model and its challenges to create a strong, competitive economy based on R&D in strategic areas in International Innovation magazine.

The 2D-INK project, led by the Molecular and Supramolecular Materials group of POLYMAT-UPV/EHU, has been funded by the European Union with 2,962,661 €. The projects aims at developing inks of novel 2D semiconducting materials -needed for the functioning of electronic devices- for low-cost large-area fabrication processes on insulating substrates through a new methodology, which will exceed the properties of state-of-the-art graphene- and graphene oxide based inks. From these semiconductor inks it would be possible to produce the next generation of ultrathin electronic appliances (such as transistors, LEDs, and solar cells) using the same technology of the current inkjet printers.

Members of the Basque Government have been visiting nanoGUNE today, and have presented the new ELKARTEK Program that will fund collaborative research in strategic areas for the Basque Country. The delegation has been formed by the Basque Minister of Economic Development and Competitiveness, Arantxa Tapia, the Deputy Minister of Technology, Innovation and Competitiveness, Estíbaliz Hernáez, and the Director of Technology of the Basque Government, Leyre Bilbao.

Luca Pietrobon, Pre-doctoral Researcher at the Nanodevices Group at nanoGUNE, receives his PhD at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) after the defense of his thesis project on Friday 5 June 2015. His research work, entitled “Charge and spin transport in graphene devices", has been developed under the supervision of the Nanodevices Group Leader and Ikerbasque Research Professor Dr. Luis E. Hueso.

NanoGUNE offers 4 scholarships to students of the Master in Nanoscience and the Master in New Materials of the UPV/EHU choosing Master thesis subjects within one of nanoGUNE's research groups.

Our goal has been to create a dynamic website to encourage visitors participation and to inform about the work done in the center.

Summer is almost here and so they are our summer internship students. This year 10 science degree students will join nanoGUNE's Summer Internship Program and will spend two months working at the research center in the framework of a specific research project.