The Centre for Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies (Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies de l'université Paris-Saclay) or C2N, is a nanotechnology laboratory created as joint research unit (UMR 9001) between the

University of Paris-Saclay Paris-Saclay University (french: Université Paris-Saclay) is a public research university based in Paris, France. It is one of the 13 prestigious universities that emerged from the division of the University of Paris, also known as the Sorbonne. ...

and the

French National Centre for Scientific Research The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,63 ...

(CNRS.) CNRS and the university announced this collaboration in 2013, with the goal of uniting two existing laboratories of Ile-de-France: the Institute for Fundamental Electronics (Institut d'Electronique Fondamentale, IEF) and the Laboratory for Photonics Nanostructures (Laboratoire de Photonique et de Nanostructures, LPN) Facility construction began in April, 2015, the first stone was laid on June 28, 2016, and the C2N facility began operations in September, 2017. It is located on the Paris-Saclay campus in

Palaiseau Palaiseau () is a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. Palaiseau is a sub-prefecture of the Essonne department and the seat of the Arrondissement of Palaiseau. Inhabitants of Palaiseau ar ...

, 20 miles south of

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

. According to the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

's MIR-Bose project, "The Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (C2N) is one of the largest laboratories of University Paris-Sud with 283 members including 83 permanent researchers, 160 PhD students and post-doctoral researchers and 40 technical and administrative staff members."

Research areas

The core of the research is based

silicon Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic ta ...

and

III-V Semiconductor materials are nominally small band gap insulators. The defining property of a semiconductor material is that it can be compromised by doping it with impurities that alter its electronic properties in a controllable way. Because of ...

nano-electronics, nanomagnetism (

spintronics Spintronics (a portmanteau meaning spin transport electronics), also known as spin electronics, is the study of the intrinsic spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment, in addition to its fundamental electronic charge, in solid-st ...

), micro- and nano-photonics (III-V and

silicon photonics Silicon photonics is the study and application of photonic systems which use silicon as an optical medium. The silicon is usually patterned with sub-micrometre precision, into microphotonic components. These operate in the infrared, most comm ...

), and nanosystems (manufacturing and characterization.) It has four main divisions: *

Photonics Photonics is a branch of optics that involves the application of generation, detection, and manipulation of light in form of photons through emission, transmission, modulation, signal processing, switching, amplification, and sensing. Though ...

department, *

Materials Material is a substance or mixture of substances that constitutes an object. Materials can be pure or impure, living or non-living matter. Materials can be classified on the basis of their physical and chemical properties, or on their geolog ...

Department, *

Nanoelectronics Nanoelectronics refers to the use of nanotechnology in electronic components. The term covers a diverse set of devices and materials, with the common characteristic that they are so small that inter-atomic interactions and quantum mechanical p ...

Department, * Microsystems and Nanobiofluidics Department.Presentation, C2N
/ref> The C2N is one of three major French centers of research on nanotechnology (the other two are in

Grenoble lat, Gratianopolis , commune status = Prefecture and commune , image = Panorama grenoble.png , image size = , caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...

and

Toulouse Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Pa ...

.) Several other related research groups are located near

Paris-Saclay Paris-Saclay is a research-intensive and business cluster currently under construction in the south of Paris, France. It encompasses research facilities, two French major universities with higher education institutions (''grandes écoles'') and ...

, including

Thales Thales of Miletus ( ; grc-gre, Θαλῆς; ) was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and pre-Socratic philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. He was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regarded ...

, and STMicroelectronics. Scientists from other institutions visit C2N to make use of its

single-photon source Single-photon sources are light sources that emit light as single particles or photons. These sources are distinct from coherent light sources (lasers) and thermal light sources such as incandescent light bulbs. The Heisenberg uncertainty principl ...

. C2N researchers fabricated a chip used as the miniature "particle collider" that produced the first solid confirmation of the quasiparticles

anyons In physics, an anyon is a type of quasiparticle that occurs only in two-dimensional systems, with properties much less restricted than the two kinds of standard elementary particles, fermions and bosons. In general, the operation of exchangi ...

, a scientific collaboration with ENS researchers that was featured on the cover of ''

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

''."Fractional statistics of anyons in a two-dimensional conductor" (''C2N News'', April 10, 2020)
/ref>

References

External links

Official website
{{Coord, 48.7122, 2.1963, type:landmark_region:FR, display=title Research institutes in France Nanotechnology Paris-Saclay