Facilities & Labs

The scientific activities are focused on the physics and the chemistry of soft matter and on its applications in structured systems for advanced micro/nano-optics/photonics/fluidics.
New composite nanostructured materials are realized through bottom-up and hybrid bottom-up/top-down processes. Plasmonic materials, metamaterials and micro/nano structured materials, engineered by different methods, are fabricate and used in many fields, as energy harvesting, new sensing platforms and bio-medicine.
Our mission is to design, fabricate and characterize soft materials, including composites and hybrids, organic and biological. The manufacturing approach is twofold: firstly, nonlinear optics nano-microlithography is implemented in combination with micro-optical manipulation for realization of 2D / 3D structures made of polymer / nano-particles and integrable nano-structured micro-fluidic devices. Secondly, by a bottom-up approach, molecular self-assembling is exploited in order to get mesoscopic structures, from nanometer to micrometer scale, useful for optical and opto-fluidic applications.
Optical, structural and morphological properties are studied with the support of the thematic labs of our facility, where the most advanced investigation techniques are available: Ultrafast time-resolved IR-VIS multimodal non-linear optical spectroscopies, Ellipsometry, 2P Laser Scanning Confocal Microscopy integrated with an AFM system, Integrated Confocal Fluorescence Microscope / SNOM for simultaneous far and near field analyses, electronic microscopies (SEM, TEM), x-ray reflectometry (GID), optical micro-manipulation, SFA allowing for accurate measurements of inter-surfaces forces as small as 100 nN, with a Å-accuracy in the separation gap control, 250 sqm ISO 5 clean room supplied with thin film preparation and surface treatments equipment.
A large part of the research laboratories contributes to the CNR National User Facility Beyond-Nano – Polo di Cosenza and is accessible to external scientists by offering advanced research and technological services.