Welcome to the 'Electronic and Optical Properties of Molecular Nanostructures' group at the Institute of Nanotechnology. It is my pleasure to introduce you to our research that focuses primarily on the science and on the applications of carbon nanotubes.

Carbon nanotubes are hollow, quasi 1-dimensional, molecular nanostructures, typically 1 nm in diameter and 1 μm in length, made of a monoatomic wall of sp2-bonded carbon atoms, and is the equivalent of a rolled-up graphene nanoribbon.

The general interest in carbon nanotubes is due to their outstanding electronic, optical and mechanical properties. Based on these properties, many applications are envisioned such as nanotube based interconnects, -transistors, -sensors, -displays, -actuators, -composites and many more.

Our commitment is to significantly contribute to the grand technological challenges and to the scientific knowledge to enable new applications. In this context we

- develop methods to sort carbon nanotubes according to their electronic properties;

- develop techniques for parallel assembling of carbon nanotubes, graphene, organic molecules, nanoparticles and nanorods to form functional units;

- develop new characterization techniques for highly integrated device arrays;

- study the electronic and optical properties of sorted carbon nanotube material, single-tube devices and nanotube-molecule hybrids.