MINATEC in figures

How do you weigh a bacteria-eating virus that is too light for precision scales but too heavy for mass spectrometry? Researchers from Leti and BIG developed and patented a novel “nanoscale” technique to do just that. The technique uses an array of around 20 nanomechanical resonators that are made to vibrate. The virus is then introduced into a chamber with the array, and the system measures the difference in frequency. The measurement is taken inside the chamber of a new… More information

In late 2018 the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regional government announced that it would provide €35 million in financing for the Nano 2022 initiative. The vast majority of the funds will be invested in the Grenoble area, with stakeholders like Leti, STMicroelectronics, Soitec, Sofradir, and ULIS among the beneficiaries. The R&D conducted under Nano 2022 will focus on four technologies: low-power processors, power semiconductors, smart sensors, and compound semiconductors for microelectronics. Nano 2022 was set up after the European Commission gave the green… More information

Sylvain Colomb took over from Alain Briand as head of the CEA Grenoble’s tech transfer and spinoff programs in January. Colomb, 41 years old, is an electronics engineer and has personal experience starting a spinoff. He is one of the cofounders of Ethera, spun off from the CEA in 2010 to develop indoor air quality analyzers based on a nanoporous material. Colomb came back to the CEA in 2016, taking a position at the CEA Tech regional branch in Hauts-de-France.… More information

The Synchrotron’s Extremely Brilliant Source project commenced on December 10. Over the 20 months of the project, the entire X-ray source—magnets, vacuum tubes, RF cavities, cryogenics—will be replaced. The new X-ray source will be more energy efficient and will emit a beam that is ten times smaller and, therefore, a hundred times brighter than the old beam. Future experiments will benefit from resolutions ten times higher than what the source currently provides. The €150 million project will affect INAC, which… More information