Join us at the 2020 MIT – Fundacion Ramon Areces Symposium, to explore the power of nano.

A nanometer is a mere one billionth of a meter. If you were to travel 50,000 nanometers, you'd only be halfway across the width of a human hair. But researchers have discovered that matter at this scale behaves in revolutionary ways. Twenty-five years of intensive research now gives us the power to reshape our world from the nanoscale up.

It's like lifting a corner of the periodic table and discovering another version underneath—one that lists the same elements, but with entirely new properties for the compounds and materials they form. Now, for elements across the periodic table, MIT scientists and engineers are revealing astonishing new behaviors—and inventing powerful ways to put them to work.

At this symposium, you’ll learn how three highly recognized MIT faculty are leading the way to advance disruptive research on this topic, from the extreme materials revolution and 3D integration, to the dawn of the nano age.

November 16 - Tomás Palacios : The Extreme Materials Revolution: From Computers in Venus to Synthetic Cells

The end of traditional transistor scaling brings unprecedented new opportunities to semiconductor devices and electronics. In this new era, heterogeneous integration of new materials becomes key in order to add new functionality and value to electronic chips. This talk will review some examples of these new opportunities, including 1. Gallium Nitride vertical power transistors and CMOS logic for a much more efficient electric grid; 2. One-layer-thick molybdenum disulfide wi-fi energy harvesters to enable ubiquitous electronics; 3. High temperature CMOS technology to power future missions to Venus; and 4. A new generation of cell-sized autonomous electronic microsystems to revolutionize environmental monitoring and healthcare. The talk will conclude with a reflection on how the democratization of heterogeneous integration and the unique properties of extreme materials will transform our society, just as Moore’s law has done for the last 50 years.

November 16 -  Jesús del Álamo: 3D integration: above and beyond Moore’s Law

Much has been written about “The End of Moore’s Law” for over a decade. The term evokes a picture of stalled computing performance. Reality is far from this doomsday scenario and the outlook of information processing technology appears brighter than ever. Certainly, as transistor footprint scaling is quickly approaching a regime in which “smaller is no longer better,” a radical redirection is mandatory. The new path is the third dimension, piling transistors on top of each other in a 3D construction. The promise goes beyond the integration of more transistors per unit area to keep the economic incentives behind Moore’s Law. The third dimension opens new possibilities to bring together logic and memory and break the “memory wall”, the current bottleneck for system performance. Intimate memory and logic integration will also enable artificial intelligence chips capable of efficiently processing very large data sets. This talk will outline opportunities and challenges for future IC technologies while showcasing relevant MIT research on new materials, devices, and process technology.

November 17 - Vladimir Bulovic: At the Dawn of the Nano Age: MIT.nano and the Future of Discovery

MIT.nano, a research center for nanoscience and nanotechnology located at the heart of the MIT campus, opened in 2018, and is designed to bring together the collective creative power of MIT researchers and global partners.  With nano-scale advancements we are reimagining Health and Life Sciences, Energy, Computing, Information Technology, Manufacturing, Quantum Science, …  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. 

MIT.nano is now shaped as a comprehensive 200,000 sqft shared facility, designed to give researchers and innovators access to 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 also marked the beginning of a new era of nano-education at MIT, with hands-on 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, Bulović will describe the latest works of MIT’s campus discoveries.   He will share his vision for the innovation journeys MIT and its partners can take together in the labs of MIT.nano, delivering breakthrough solutions and spurring public narratives that can define our time.