Nanotechnology Research - Universities

The Cleland group pursues research in two distinct areas: 1) Quantum-limited behavior of electronic and mechanical systems, and 2) Developing tools for biophysical and biomedical applications.

The nanopore project at UC Santa Cruz has pioneered the use of ion channels for the analysis of single RNA and DNA molecules.

The center's mission is the development of optofluidic devices and their application to single particle studies in molecular biology and biomedical diagnostics.

The Madhukar Group's research has revolved around electronic response (electrical and optical) of synthesized materials and structures in reduced (two, one, and zero) dimensions and their potential use in electronic and optoelectronic devices for information sensing, processing, imaging and computing technologies. The emphasis for some time has been on three dimensionally confined (i.e. zero dimensional) nanostructures called quantum dots and the scope in recent years has expanded to include biochemical materials (peptides, proteins) and hybrid semiconductor-biomolecular nanostructures for biomedical applications, particularly neural prostheses.