MIT.nano

Held at MIT.nano, nanoLab is an initiative of the MIT- @TecdeMonterrey Program in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology – a multidisciplinary collaboration between Tec & @MIT launched in 2014. “It’s really exciting to be here,” said Tec student Hazzel Fernández. global.mit.edu/news-stories/n…

MIT engineers developed a way to generate 3D photonic devices with nanoscale features, by shrinking them after fabrication. In their new study, they created devices in a variety of shapes, including helices and a shape inspired by the wing of a butterfly. news.mit.edu/2026/powerful-…

Camille Cunin @MIT PhD ’26 is transforming rigid circuitry into stretchable, signal-amplifying devices built for real-world biomedical use. news.mit.edu/2026/solving-h…

A new technique developed by researchers from @MIT and Lincoln Laboratory (@MITLL) helps scientists measure a phenomenon that can cause quantum circuits to perform differently than expected, increasing the error in computations. news.mit.edu/2026/improving…

Ribosomes, the cellular machines that assemble proteins, are made from dozens of proteins and RNA molecules. Putting all of those pieces together is a complex puzzle — one that @MITBiology Associate Professor Joey Davis PhD ’10 revels in trying to solve. news.mit.edu/2026/biologist…

A new study from @MIT researchers could help enable next-generation lidar sensors that are compact, durable, and have no moving parts. The key advance is a novel design for a silicon-photonics chip, which is a semiconductor device that manipulates light. news.mit.edu/2026/photonics…

Each year, 1,500+ researchers rely on 200+ tools at MIT.nano to pursue experiments that span @MIT’s disciplines, generating 160,000 hours of work across 88,000 instances of tool use. Read about the operational framework behind this dynamic facility. news.mit.edu/2026/powering-…

Congrats to @MIT postdoc Kaidong Peng, PhD '23, on receiving the inaugural Dennis Grimard Distinguished User Award recognizing MIT.nano facility users who go beyond standard expectations to meaningfully improve the facility and the broader user community. mitnano.mit.edu/dennis-grimard…

A new cluster tool at MIT.nano introduces capabilities that will allow researchers to continue advancements in the performance of qubits, the minuscule building blocks of the quantum computer. news.mit.edu/2026/materials…

MIT researchers found a paradoxical phenomenon in optical physics: under the right conditions, a chaotic mess of laser light can spontaneously self-organize into a highly focused “pencil beam.” This could enable a fast, high-resolution bioimaging method. news.mit.edu/2026/self-orga…

MIT researchers’ fabrication technique produces soft, microscopic structures with magnetically activated moving parts that could be the basis for soft, microscopic, magnetically responsive robots and materials. The work was conducted, in part, at MIT.nano! news.mit.edu/2026/microscop…

In experiments w/ rice seeds, MIT engineers found that the sound of falling droplets effectively shook the seeds out of a dormant state, stimulating them to germinate at a faster rate compared with seeds that were not exposed to the same sound vibrations. news.mit.edu/2026/plants-ca…

Happy Spring! 🌻 MIT.nano facility users, faculty, and staff recently participated in a springtime social gathering to decorate pots, plant seeds, enjoy ice cream, and spend some time together outside of the labs. Thank you to the FUN.nano student committee for organizing!

We're thrilled to announce that Gang Chen, the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering at @MIT, will deliver the 2026 Mildred S. Dresselhaus Lecture! Read more: mitnano.mit.edu/mitnano-semina…

Living systems are soft & squishy, while electronics are hard & rigid. In work that could impact human-machine interfaces, biocompatible devices, and soft robotics, @MIT engineers developed a soft, flexible gel that changes its conductivity with light. news.mit.edu/2026/light-act…

MIT researchers created a quantum sensor that can measure multiple physical quantities at high-resolution. The devices represent a key step toward practical quantum sensing, with applications in biomedical sensing, materials characterization, and more. news.mit.edu/2026/multitask…

Ocean acidification threatens shellfish in Maine; @MIT scientists are helping by working with fisheries to pull CO2 from seawater using electrodes. “Without science, we don’t have a prayer of continuing this industry,” oyster farmer Bill Mook says. news.mit.edu/2026/carbon-re…

What if the Trojan horse had been pulled to pieces, revealing the ruse and fending off invasion, just as it entered Troy? That’s an apt description of a newly characterized bacterial defense system that chops up foreign DNA. Read more from @MITBiology⤵️ news.mit.edu/2026/slice-and…

Engineers developing hardware for robots or prosthetics have long struggled to mimic muscles' unique combination of strength, rapid response, scalability, & control. Now, researchers developed artificial fibers that come closer to matching these qualities. news.mit.edu/2026/new-type-…

Congratulations to @MIT Professor Desirée Plata, the School of Engineering Distinguished Climate and Energy Professor in @MIT_CEE, on being named associate dean of engineering! news.mit.edu/2026/desiree-p…