Dr. Rob Knobel
WORKING AT A FANTASTICALLY SMALL SCALE
YIELDS BIG RESULTS!
Dr. Rob Knobel (Sc’91) is probing the ultimate limits of nanomechanical systems to develop and build tiny vapour sensors, which could be used as airport security tools to prevent terrorism or drug smuggling. He and his students are using highly specialized equipment in the $5-million Kingston Nano-Fabrication Laboratory (KNFL), which opened a year ago in Innovation Park, to fabricate nanosensors made from graphene, a form of carbon a single atom thick. “Graphene is the strongest, lightest material yet discovered, and it has remarkable
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THE COMPLETE ENGINEER
electrical and mechanical properties. We’re developing graphene chemical sensors that can detect vapours in parts per billion or trillion concentration. These could potentially be used for detecting explosives or biological agents,” says Knobel, an associate professor and the Chair of Engineering Physics. In his cutting-edge research, Knobel runs experiments in which small vibrating elements fabricated at the KNFL are cooled down to temperatures near absolute zero. These nanomechanical systems—moving devices with dimensions of a few nanometres, only a few atoms thick—vibrate under the influence of vanishingly small forces, and measuring their motion presents both scientific and engineering challenges. One purpose of these cryogenic experiments is to understand and measure how the properties and behaviour of these human-made nanostructures change in the transition
from the macro world of classical physics to the quantum mechanics world on an atomic scale. “Putting and measuring a nanomechanical system in the quantum world is important, fascinating and challenging science in its own right,” he says. But Knobel’s fundamental research in the quantum realm also leads to the translation of this knowledge into promising real-world applications at room temperature. As he and his team push to develop superior nanoelectrical and nanomechanical devices with the extreme sensitivity needed to measure quantum effects, they are building better sensors with many possible practical applications of value to industry. These innovative nano-devices could be used for advanced mass spectrometry, more precise analysis of materials’ properties, biosensors to detect proteins in the blood, or extremely high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to probe single
