Fall 2022 IEN Seed Grant Winners Announced

The Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN) at Georgia Tech has announced the Fall 2022 Core Facility Seed Grant winners. The primary purpose of this program is to give first- and second-year graduate students in diverse disciplines working on original and unfunded research in micro- and nanoscale projects the opportunity to access the most advanced academic cleanroom space in the Southeast. In addition to accessing the labs' high-level fabrication, lithography, and characterization tools, the awardees will have the opportunity to gain proficiency in cleanroom and tool methodology and access the consultation services provided by research staff members in IEN. Seed Grant awardees are also provided travel support to present their research at a scientific conference.

In addition to student research skill development, this biannual grant program gives faculty with novel research topics the ability to develop preliminary data to pursue follow-up funding sources. The Core Facility Seed Grant program is supported by the Southeastern Nanotechnology Infrastructure Corridor (SENIC), a member of the National Science Foundation’s National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI).

Since the start of the grant program in 2014, 82 projects from ten different schools in Georgia Tech’s Colleges of Engineering and Science, as well as the Georgia Tech Research Institute and three other universities, have been seeded.

The four winning projects in this round were awarded IEN cleanroom and lab access time to be used over the next year. In keeping with the interdisciplinary mission of IEN, the projects that will be enabled by the grants include research in microelectronics, optoelectronics, battery technology, and novel materials for energy harvesting.

The Fall 2022 IEN Core Facility Seed Grant Award winners are:

Aluminum Oxide/Silver Microcavities for Trapping Light and Producing Polariton Coupling
PI: Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena
Student: Martin Gomez
School of Materials Science and Engineering

Facile and Scalable Fabrication of 3D-Patterned Current Collectors for Li-metal Batteries
PI: Hailong Chen
Student: Jakub Pepas
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering/School of Materials Science and Engineering

Elucidating Connections between the Piezoelectric and Auxetic Responses of Cellulose
PI: Meisha Shofner
Student: Fariha Rubaiya
School of Materials Science and Engineering

Low-Cost, Self-Propagating, Reactive Nanoporous Ni/Al Interconnects for Low-Stress Die Assembly
PI: Vanessa Smet and Antonia Antoniou
Student: Ali Amirnasiri
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

The Southeastern Nanotechnology Infrastructure Corridor, a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure, is funded by NSF Grant ECCS-2025462.