The Castellanos-Gómez Lab is an old friend of this website (and an old friend, period). And luckily for us, seems they never stop working at the highest level.

This time they bring to the table a new way to engineer the biaxial strain in 2D materials. Their approach has been to create a tiny loop (~100 µm in diameter) and by passing a current through it they’re able to locally vary the temperature of a polymer and induce a highly controlled biaxial expansion of its surface. This tool will allow to study the effect of strain in 2D materials and represents an important breaktrough in the industrialization process of these materials. As doctor Yu Kyoung Ryu (first author of the paper) points out, “this is a new milestone on 2D materials straintronics”.

We made this picture at request of the group leader Dr. Andrés Castellanos to illustrate the device. Congratulations!

(On a side note, we also did this other picture, just for fun, and cause we like them!)