Wow – we are still amazed by this year's submissions to the Micrograph Award. We are always impressed by the interesting and versatile work our customers do, but this year's work topped everything we have ever seen.
We received so many excellent submissions that we awarded 18 honorable mentions! This is a number we have never come close to in the past 20 years. The applications ranged from life sciences to plasmonics, metasurfaces, and quantum technologies, once again showing us the diversity of applications that can be achieved with our systems. The competition for the top three places was closer than ever before. However, a decision had to be made, and we are happy to announce this year's winner:
First Place: Daniele Bonaldo / University of Padua, Italy – “Large Metalens with Asymmetric Base Elements”
After much discussion and consideration, we awarded first place to Daniele Bonaldo of the University of Padua in Italy. He impressed us with his work on metalenses, which included developing and using sophisticated writing strategies in electron beam lithography. RAITH’s PerfectShapes technology enabled the creation of asymmetric pillars, which was essential to making them act on the two circular polarizations independently. Writing of large, assymmetrically distributed arrays of the pillars was implemted via algotihmic patterning with efficient data handling. Using their VOYAGER, they created a metalens that generates multipole phase beams, which could be used in free-space telecommunications.
Second Place: Connor Graham-Scott / University of Münster, Germany – “SNSPDs for Quantum Technologies”
Connor Graham-Scott from the University of Münster, Germany, comes in a very close second. He used EBPG to create superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs), which he optimized alongside integrated photonics and single-photon sources to improve performance and reliability. In particular, he optimized nanowire geometry, coupling efficiency, and thermal stability to minimize signal loss and latching effects. The picture shows eight cascaded SNSPDs on silicon nitride subwavelength gratings (SWGs). The nanowires in the middle are 120 nm wide, sitting atop gratings that are 360 nm wide, with a 90-nm gap between the gratings. Each nanowire is electrically isolated, as shown by the eight arms on each side that connect to the nanowires and electrical gold pads. The ultimate goal is to create multifunctional, fully integrated quantum chips that can perform diverse quantum processes without compromising speed or efficiency.
Third place: Matt Rudd / University of Alberta, Canada – Partially fabricated Nitride Sensor
Third place goes to Matt Rudd from the University of Alberta in Canada. The jury was impressed by his work on a permanently fiber-coupled optomechanical torque sensor. Using a VOYAGER, he fabricated devices with 300-nm-thick silicon nitride on a 3-µm-thick sacrificial silica layer on a silicon wafer. This enables the shallow, isotropic, buffered-oxide etch required to release our delicate, freestanding resonators while allowing the deep, anisotropic, potassium hydroxide etch necessary for permanent optical fiber coupling. The design minimizes cryogenic optical heating, simplifies cryostat integration, and supports magnetic thin-film samples for real-time, low-latency measurements. The resulting torque sensor is used for time-resolved studies of superconducting vortex dynamics.
Unbelievable Eighteen honorable mentioned winners
We still can’t believe it ourselves: we awarded eighteen prizes in the Honorable Mention category. Our customers really outdid themselves this year, and we've never received so many high-quality entries.
Congratulations to
- Bryan Benz (University of Basel, Switzerland),
- Kristina Bodiroga (Queen's University, Canada),
- Tim Buskasper (University of Münster, Germany),
- Antoine Dussard (Université de Technologie de Troyes, France),
- Nathan Eddy (Queen's University, Canada),
- Bernardo Ferreira (Silicon Austria Labs, Austria),
- Mario Hentschel (University of Stuttgart, Germany),
- Michael Hirler (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany),
- Julien Hurtaud (Italian Institute of Technology, Italy),
- Yunyan Liu (Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Physics, China),
- Jordi Llobet (Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona, Spain),
- Amir Loucif (Côte d'Azur University, France),
- Dominik Ludescher (University of Stuttgart, Germany),
- Tom Peach (Institute for Compound Semiconductors, United Kingdom),
- Laura Polimeno (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy),
- Joan Villa Comamala (Paul Scherrer Institut, Switzerland),
- Jiho Yoon (Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Germany), and
- Elham Zohari (University of Calgary, Canada).
The applications range from metasurfaces to displays, optoelectronics, sensors, and quantum devices, to name a few. Our customers addressed many highly relevant topics, and we are delighted to see how they are working at the forefront of nanotechnology research.
Watch the impressive image galleries here and see for yourself why this year was especially difficult for the jury.
Some Art as well
In addition to the honorable mentions, we also recognized a few submissions with an Art Award. These images especially impressed us with their visual appeal. Congratulations to Hui-Yuan Daniel Chen (Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland), Mano Raj Dhanalakshmi Veeraraj (Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland), Jordi Llobet (IMB-CNM CSIC, Spain), and Nicolas Reckinger (Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium).
Your chance to win
After the Micrograph Award comes the Micrograph Award. Although this year will be hard to top, we hope you will prove us wrong. Submissions for next year's Micrograph Award are already open, and we look forward to receiving many interesting submissions. If you create great work with your RAITH system, participate, and you might be the one who can travel to any nanotechnology-related conference, fully sponsored by us, next year.
