News

  • April 2024: We are delighted to welcome Dr. Muhammad Wajahat to our group, from March 15 2024, as a post-doctoral research associate to work on pyrolysis of 3D printed polymeric precursors for architected pyrolytic carbon structures. Muhammad has a MEng. and a PhD. in Electro-functionality Materials Engineering. He comes with valuable experience in extrusion-based 3D printing technique and advanced printed electronic devices. From March 2022 to December 2023, Muhammad worked as PostDoc at UNIST (Ulsan, Republic of Korea). His main role was to establish 3D printers and material fabrication equipment for synthesis of functional material inks. In the leisure time, he likes to take long walks, read novels, cook, and spend quality time with friends and family.
wajahat
  • March 2024: We are excited to report our new publication titled, “Portable dielectrophoresis for biology:  ADEPT facilitates cell trapping, separation, and interactions”, by Ms Albina Julius. This research highlights the adaptability of our dielectrophoresis platform, ADEPT (Adaptable Dielectrophoresis Embedded Platform Tool), in various biological applications. While dielectrophoresis enables label-free cell manipulation, ADEPT addresses its limited adoption in biological settings due to engineering expertise. ADEPT, coupled with an easy-to-use graphical interface and a microfluidic chip, showcases versatility in precision positioning, viability-based and phenotype-based cell separation, and studying cell interactions, such as steering a phagocytosis process. Serving as a plug-and-play solution, ADEPT bridges the gap between biologists and engineering skills, catering to diverse biological applications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41378-024-00654-z
vlad march 2024
  • March 2024: We are happy to welcome Dr. Doriana Vinci as a post-doctoral research associate as of March 1 2024 in our group, working on NMR/MRI and X-ray imaging correlative characterization aspects. Doriana has a MSc. in Chemical Sciences and a PhD Europaeus in Geosciences. She comes with a rich experience in X-ray crystallography and materials characterization. From May 2022 to February 2024, Doriana worked as PostDoc at the European X-ray Free Electrons Laser (Schenefeld, Germany). Her main role was to investigate spin phase transition dynamics in molecular nanocrystals by means of femtosecond time-resolved X-ray diffraction. In the free time, she likes playing boardgames, hiking, biking, cooking and photography.
  • January 2024: In this debut first-author article in Scientific Reports, titled "Broadband Stripline Lenz Lens Achieves 11 × NMR Signal Enhancement", Jianyi presents a novel NMR detector design that combines the Lenz lens and the stripline, resulting in a broadband frequency response with NMR signal enhancement up to 11 times. The research involved a thorough electrical analysis and computational simulations for the optimal resonator design, and the glass-based device was fabricated in the IMT clean room. The stripline Lenz lens was successfully applied to a sub-nanoliter sample volume, detecting four isotopes in 1D and 2D NMR across a frequency range of 125.76 to 500 MHz in an 11.7 T magnet. This concept holds great promise for small-volume NMR measurements and opens avenues for further studies of thin films, small biological samples, as well as in-situ analysis of battery materials. (Read the article here)
  • September 2023: In this new manuscript published in Biosensors and Bioelectronics: X with Ms. Albina Julius as first author, we introduce ADEPT (Adaptable Dielectrophoresis Embedded Platform Tool): a portable signal-generating electronic toolbox, that aims at enhancing dielectrophoresis (DEP) applications. The innovation addresses the gap between application scientists (e.g., biologists, chemists, physicists) and electrical engineers by providing a versatile and universal signal-generating electronic toolbox. Constructed with standard off-the-shelf electronic components, ADEPT is applicable to any micro-electrode design, allowing configurable electrical output through the activation of micro-electrodes in various electrokinetic modes. This achieves advanced control with high usability from the electronics perspective. Read the full article here and do not hesitate to contact us.
  • January 2023: Ms. Albina Julius published her first milestone paper entitled "Surface Characterisation Reveals Substrate Suitability for Cyanobachterial Phototaxis" in Acta Biomaterialia.This article is dedicated to exploring Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) compatible surfaces for investigating the phototactic twitching motility of cyanobacteria. It marks the FIRST comprehensive study characterizing surfaces, coupled with phototaxis experiments, aimed at deciphering the forces influencing twitching motility. The methodologies presented here can be expanded for the examination of different surfaces and extended to the study of other bacteria displaying twitching motility. Read the full article here and do not hesitate to contact us.
  • August 2020: As a milestone in his PhD career, Hossein published his second first author journal article, this time in Lab on a chip journal. The paper tackles the challenge of performing NMR and electrochemical experiments simultaneously, due to the incompatibility of introducing metallic structures inside the NMR sensitive volume. The study starts with a comprehensive simulation and analysis of different possible electrode geometries. Based on these simulations and thanks to the “in-house” µ-fabrication facilities in IMT, a selection of electrochemistry platforms was fabricated. These platforms were employed to conduct chitosan electrodeposition as a proof-of-concept electrochemical experiment and monitor the process in situ using microscale NMR, for the first time. (Read the article here.)
NMR-compatible microfluidic platform enabling in situ electrochemistry

  • September 2017: Dr. Kirill Poletkin has co-edited the recent book on Magnetic Sensors and Devices: Technologies and Applications. Laurent Francis, Kirill Poletkin and Krzysztof Iniewski eds. CRC Press, ISBN 9781498710978, 2017.

    Dr. Poletkin and Dr. Badilita have contributed under the chapter “Micro-machined inductive contactless suspension: Technology and Modeling,” (101-131); by Kirill Poletkin, Vlad Badilita, Zhiqiu Lu, Ulrike Wallrabe and Christopher Shearwood.

    The book can be accessed via the following link: https://www.crcpress.com/Magnetic-Sensors-and-Devices-Technologies-and-Applications/Francis-Poletkin-Iniewski/p/book/9781498710978

Cover of the book on Magnetic Sensors and Devices: Technologies and Applications
  • September 2017: Belated news from Power MEMS 2017 Organization Committee: The abstract of Mr. Shalati an MSc student in SPA Lab, entitled “Novel concept of a series linear electromagnetic array artificial muscle” (Shalati, R., Poletkin, K. V., Korvink, J. G. and Badilita, V.) has been also accepted for an oral presentation in Power MEMS 2017, Kanazawa, Japan. This is the 3rd out of three SPA contributions, all of them accepted for oral presentation at Power MEMS 2017.
     
  • September 2017: SPA-Lab will be attending 17th International Conference on Micro and Nanotechnology for Power Generation and Energy Conversion Applications (Power MEMS 2017) with two oral presentations entitled:

     • “Pull-in Actuation in Micro-machined Hybrid Contactless Suspension”
       Poletkin K. V., Shalati R., Korvink J. G., and Badilita, V.

     • “Energy aware 3D micro-machined inductive suspensions with polymer magnetic composite core”
       Poletkin K. V., Lu Z., Moazenzadeh A., Mariappan G. S., Korvink J. G., Wallrabe U. and Badilita V.

    PowerMEMS2017 is to take place on November 14 - 17, 2017, in Kanazawa, Japan. Mr. Shalati (Master student at SPA-Lab) and Dr. Badilita will be delivering the presentations.
     
  • June 2017: Shyamsundar Adhikari, a Ph.D. student in the Spin and Photon Applications group was awarded with the Jeol poster prize at the Euromar conference 2017 in Warsaw for his poster entitled “On-chip capacitors for MACS NMR detectors”. Jeol poster prize is given to the top 3 posters in the conference.
     
  • June 2017: Shyamsundar Adhikari, a Ph.D. student in the Spin and Photon Applications group was awarded with the student stipend from the Euromar 2017 conference committee to attend the conference in Warsaw.
     
  • SPA-Lab will be represented by Dr. Kirill Poletkin at the TRANSDUCERS 2017 Conference in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, with the oral presentation entitled “A Qualitative Technique to Study Stability and Dynamics of Micromachined Inductive Contactless Suspensions”. This work is a collaboration with Prof. Ulrike Wallrabe at the Chair of Microactuators at IMTEK, University of Freiburg.
  • Mr. Mohammad Abdo has represented the SPA-Lab at the Photonics West 2017 conference in San Francisco, CA, USA, with the oral presentation entitled “Automatic correction of diffraction pattern shift in a pushbroom hyperspectral imager with a piezoelectric internal line-scanning unit”. The work was done in collaboration with Department SciTec, University of Applied Sciences Jena, and the Chair of Microactuators, IMTEK, University of Freiburg, and was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)."
Mr. Mohammad Abdo has represented the SPA-Lab at the Photonics West 2017 conference in San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Mr. Mohammad Abdo will give a presentation during the SPIE Photonics West conference in San Francisco, CA, on 31 Jan, 2017 with the title “Automatic correction of diffraction pattern shift in a pushbroom hyperspectral imager with a piezoelectric internal line-scanning unit”.
    https://spie.org/PWO/conferencedetails/photonic-instrumentation