Researchers from nanoGUNE, in collaboration with ICFO and Graphenea, introduce a platform technology based on optical antennas for trapping and controlling light with the one-atom-thick material graphene. The experiments show that the dramatically squeezed graphene-guided light can be focused and bent, following the fundamental principles of conventional optics. The work, published yesterday in Science, opens new opportunities for smaller and faster photonic devices and circuits.

Raul Zazpe, Pre-doctoral Researcher at the Nanodevices Group at nanoGUNE, received his PhD at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) after the defense of his thesis project on Wednesday 30 April 2014. His research work, entitled “Resistive switching in Hafnium oxide”, has been developed under the supervision of the Nanodevices Group Leader and Ikerbasque Research Professor Dr. Luis Hueso.

NanoGUNE has set up its External-Services department, a comprehensive proposal combining cutting-edge equipment and qualified personnel to serve academia and companies.

Researchers from the Nanomagnetism Group at nanoGUNE have developed a novel device for on-chip selective trap and two-dimensional remote manipulation of single and multiple fluid-borne magnetic particles using field controlled magnetic domain walls in circular nanostructures. The combination of differently shaped nanorings and field sequences allows for the remote manipulation of magnetic particles with high precision along any arbitrary pathway on a chip surface.

The fact that the properties of materials vary on the nanoscale opens up endless applications that are beginning to be part of our daily lives. These are concepts that may escape our understanding but which have been handled at nanoGUNE on a daily basis for the last five years. Scientific work which the students, teachers, engineers, doctors, architects, economists, retirees, housewives, etc. who came to nanoGUNE on its 5th year anniversary had the chance to get to know first-hand with the help of the center’s researchers.

Researchers from the nanoscience research center CIC nanoGUNE, the Freie Universität Berlin and Neaspec company employ nano-FTIR spectroscopy for label-free chemical and structural imaging of proteins with nanoscale spatial resolution and with sensitivity to single protein complexes of less than one attogram (10-18 gram). The work has been published recently in Nature Communications. (I. Amenabar et al., Nature Communications, 2013, DOI:10.1038/ncomms3890)

Repsol and the Centre for Industrial Technological Development (CDTI in its Spanish initials), have signed an agreement with Graphenea, nanoGUNE’s first start-up company, through which both will invest jointly a million euros in the share capital of the technological company. CDTI is a body dependent on the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government.

The researcher Jose Ignacio Pascual of nanoGUNE, together with researchers of the Free University of Berlin, has developed a method to manipulate magnetism in atoms. This research makes it possible to drive forward the exploration of new methods of information storage and computation on an atomic scale. The work has been published recently in the prestigious journal Nature Physics.

nanoGUNE’s researcher Alexey Nikitin, in collaboration with researchers from the Imperial College (London) and the University of Zaragoza (Spain), has participated as a “guest editor” in the Special Issue on Graphene Nanophotonics published by Journal of Optics. The Special Issue focuses on the emerging Graphene nanophotonics research area, where topics on nanophotonics and the several extraordinary properties of graphene are combined.

A team of researchers from different research centers and institutions, including nanoGUNE, has shown the physical mechanism underlying the ability to control the polarization of light exploiting the excitation of collective oscillations of conduction electrons in nanosize magnetic disks. The research was recently published in Physical Review Letters.