Dr. Huan Hu

Postdoctoral Research Scientist, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center

Title:  Advancing Nanomanufacturingfor Crucial Healthcare Applications

Bio: Huan Hu received his Ph.D. in Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2014. Afterward he joined the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center as a postdoctoral research scientist working on developing novel nanomanufacturingprocess for bionanotechnologyapplications. He has published 16 journal papers and filed 14 patents (with 1 patent recently issued) in IBM and won the IBM invention achievement award of a third plateau and a best poster award in the annual Albany Nanotechnology symposium in 2016.

Abstract: Nanotechnology holds great promise for innovation in healthcare technologies. As the cornerstone of nanotechnology, nanomanufacturingis crucial in enabling many promising technology that rely on the unique properties of nanostructures and nanodevices.
In the first half of my talk, I will introduce a tip-based nanofabrication approach that uses a heated nanoscale tip for fabricating nano-sensors. This tip-based approach is a fast, versatile prototyping technology for building functional nanostructures and nano-devices used in healthcare. Using this tip-based approach, various nano-devices such as mechanical nano-resonators, nanofluidicchannels, optical gratings, graphene transistors are demonstrated.

In the second half of my talk, I will list three research projects all enabled by nanomanufacturing. The first one is about a newly developed lab-on-chip technology named nanoDLD(deterministic lateral displacement) that uses the most advanced semiconductor nanomanufacturingprocess to produce nanopillararrays that can isolate nanoparticles based on their sizes such as exosomes, a potential biomarker for cancer. The second one is about applying a low-cost nanomanufacturingprocesses for fabricating silicon nanospikesfor bio-inspired antibacterial surface applications. The third one is about using a unique spalling process for fabricating high-performance wearable sensors. This process allows thin films of silicon prefabricated with electronics to be directly peeled off a single crystal silicon substrate without using more costly silicon-on-insulator wafers, and is compatible with existing semiconductor manufacturing process.