Nano Science and Technology

HKUST has been pioneering research in this frontier area, hailed as the century's defining science. Our researchers successfully fabricated the world's smallest single-walled carbon nanotubes (0.4 nm) in 2000 and later discovered their superconducting properties. These breakthroughs have led to further research success this year — progress that promises wide-ranging applications.

The Department of Mechanical Engineering launched research initiatives in nano-micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS) technology. Researchers in the Department have shown that the deformation behavior of materials in the nanoscale is vastly stiffer than the same material in the human scale. The MEMS/NEMS studies open up a bright new window onto the engineering applications of nano technology.

A team in the Department of Chemical Engineering developed protocols for incorporating nanoporous zeolite materials in microsystem architectures.