Self-removing salt crystals

A newly discovered mechanism by which salt crystals leap off nanoengineered surfaces may lead to the development of industrial materials that resist the buildup of minerals from fresh and salt water.

2024 MIT Sustainability Conference—Oct. 22

The 2024 MIT Sustainability Conference will highlight leading MIT faculty, researchers, and MIT-connected startups aligned with MIT's mission 
to “do bigger things faster.” in regards to climate change. Experts will share advancements related to energy generation and storage, carbon capture, and the decarbonization of industry. The impact of AI will be explored, in terms of both its unprecedented energy demands and its potential as a tool in climate mitigation.

Presented by the MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP).

Read more and register.

Be an MIT.nano tour guide; earn Tech Cash! Next training Oct. 17

Volunteer to be an MIT.nano tour guide! Share the fascinating world of nanoscience and nanotechnology with facility visitors. Tours are being scheduled now for the spring semester and beyond. MIT.nano will provide a script and tour training, as well as Tech Cash for each completed tour.

Come to our next tour guide training on October 17! 12PM - 1:30PM in 12-3005. Lunch will be provided.

Use this form to volunteer.

Synergistic Effects of Defects and Strain on Photoluminescence in Van der Waals Layered Crystal

Material engineers usually strive for perfection in the material composition and shape. However, nature is not always perfect, and many useful material properties originate from defects in the structure rather than from perfect periodicity and symmetry of materials. In a just-published Advanced Optical Materials manuscript, Abhishek Mukherjee and co-authors show how one can harness these imperfections to tune and enhance photoluminescence from AgScP2S6 – a new layered semiconductor material recently synthesized in the Air Force Research Lab.

Recent experiments conducted at Dr. Svetlana Boriskina’s MIT-META research lab, MIT.nano, ISN, and the Institute of Physics in Warsaw reveal that nano-scale sulfur vacancies in AgScP2S6 allow defect-state-to-valence-band transitions leading to visible light emission, while micro-scale structural defects in the material can enhance and modulate the photoluminescence intensity and shape its spectrum.

Read the paper in Advanced Optical Materials

Announcing the 2024 Dresselhaus Lecturer: Clare Grey

MIT.nano is thrilled to announce the 2024 Mildred S. Dresselhaus Lecturer: Clare Grey!

Clare P. Grey, DBE, FRS is a Royal Society Research Professor and the Geoffrey Moorhouse-Gibson Professor of Chemistry at Cambridge University.

New material sports wavy layers of atoms

MIT physicists and colleagues have created a new material with unusual superconducting and metallic properties thanks to wavy layers of atoms only billionths of a meter thick that repeat themselves over and over to create a macroscopic sample that can be manipulated by hand. The large size of the sample makes it much easier to explore its quantum behavior, or interactions at the atomic scale that give rise to its properties.

Read more from MRL