UW-Stevens Point Professor’s Nanotechnology Breakthrough Wins Award

A University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point professor’s breakthrough in nanotechnology — a portable science kit that creates extremely small wires — has been named one of the top technological innovations of 2013 by R&D magazine.

The “NanoFab Lab … in a Box!” won one of the magazine’s “Oscar of Invention awards.” The box is a shoebox-sized tool kit that allows students to create nanowires in the classroom.

“Nanowires are extremely small wires,” said UW-Stevens Point chemistry professor Mike Zach, who created the kit. “If you took a bundle of a million of the smallest wires twisted together, you’re still not the thickness of a single strand of a spider’s web. You carry them around every day — nside your cell phones, there are a lot of very, very tiny wires.“

Zach said that up until now, you needed a multimillion-dollar scientific clean room to create those tiny wires.

“We’re replacing a lot of that type of technology,” said Zach. “We can essentially do that in a pill bottle on an ordinary bench top.”

When students use the kit, they pour a chemical solution into a pill bottle, and attach a special electrode developed by Zach and scientists at the Argonne National Lab. The current cuts a path through microscopic layers of diamonds on a silicon wafer, creating a template for the nanowires.

Each “NanoFab Lab in a Box” costs less than a thousand dollars. Zach said he’s looking for sponsors to bring the kits to schools all across the country.

“People that are interested in helping reach out especially to rural schools, inner-city schools, tribal schools, that would like to sponsor that to create opportunities for students,” said Zach.

Zach said Wausau public schools will be getting the new scientific tool kits thanks to a grant from the Community Foundation of North Central Wisconsin.