News Article

Teensy tiny technology


9/23/2010 10:17:53 AM


Dr. Gurinder Kaur, physics professor at College of the North Atlantic’s Labrador West Campus, works at her atomic force microscope, which helps her observe materials in her Nanotechnology Research Laboratory.

Published on September 21st, 2010
Printed with permission from the Aurora
Svjetlana (Lana) Vrbanic

Bigger’s not always better

Dr. Gurinder Kaur is undertaking a larger-than-life research project dealing with the smallest technology. Nanotechnology’s got the physics department a buzz at College of the North Atlantic’s Labrador West Campus and Dr. Kaur is at the head of innovation with her Nanotechnology Research Laboratory.

Dr. Gurinder Kaur is undertaking a larger-than-life research project dealing with the smallest technology.

Nanotechnology’s got the physics department a buzz at College of the North Atlantic’s Labrador West Campus and Dr. Kaur is at the head of innovation with her Nanotechnology Research Laboratory.

It promises to revolutionize industry and make people’s lives easier by making data storage devices more efficient, cost-effective, and portable.

Ever wonder how music is stored on CD’s or movies on DVD’s or files on memory sticks? It is done through nano-structured materials and, according to Dr. Kaur; it’s the wave of the future.

Not easy

“People working in my particular field, we’re heading towards the nano structuring of these materials and devices – that’s where technology’s taking us,” she noted.

“In my particular field there are very few people who are trying this kind of approach,” she added. “The success rate has not been so good so far.
People have tried and people are trying, but haven’t had success. Nanostructuring is not easy. It’s not easy to bring atoms together in a particular configuration. Then you have to check the reproducibility of your results – an important factor which is hindering the commerciability of this technology.”

Dr. Kaur graduated from University of Delhi with a PhD in physics and was at University of Western Ontario before she got a permanent faculty position at the CNA in 2007, teaching university transfer courses.

“(Nanotechnology’s) been my field of research for a long time, I got a job here, I wanted to do research, and the college encouraged me,” she said. “They allowed me to apply for funding and I set up a research lab here. It was tough setting up the lab because the college didn’t have anything at all – no one knew what the research was all about. It was a lot of hard work.”

She received funding from the college, she explained, and a $100,000 grant form the provincial government’s Industrial Research Innovation Fund, which went toward purchasing equipment including an atomic force microscope.

“If there’s a research lab in Labrador City, it will contribute to the development of the city at an international and national level,” she said. “I know of people who’ve never heard of Labrador City. I like it here – it’s a beautiful place and people are very nice, simple, sweet, and very supportive of my work.”

Bottoms up approach

She uses a bottom up approach to her work, she explained, starting from atoms.

It is called the Colloidal Method, which involves working to combine atoms (chemical synthesis) while they’re in their liquid state.

Liquids can then be evaporated and the material turned into a solid state (usually glass), which can then be used in electronic devices.

The compatibility to other electronics, she emphasized, is of utmost importance.

For example, in a CD player, a laser interacts with a certain material and switches its state.

The switching is reflected by a laser and read by electronics, she explained, as binary data.

That’s why, she went on to say, the switching time of a material is important and highly stable material she experiments with most is the combination of chemical elements germanium, antimony, and tellurium (GST).

She said the elements are not hazardous and are easy to handle, and once combined in a liquid state they can be turned into a thin film for further study.

She’s most interested in fourth to sixth group elements and their parameters including bonding with other elements, electronic structure, and band structure.

One nano particle she studies, she noted, can be anywhere from 10 to 1,000 atoms or 100 thousandth thickness of a hair.

The size, however, she said, is the main hindrance because it takes high-tech equipment to observe and sometimes she has to send materials out to be observed by more powerful microscopes at other universities.

“In a year or two years, we can hope to get somewhere,” she said. “Here it’s a little slow progress because we do not have any institution with good experimental facilities within easy reach, so we must use the facilities at other institutions.”

In addition to optical and electronic materials, she noted, she’s also doing research on semi-conducting materials that can be used in drug delivery.

However, she said, getting a novel material—that can be commercially used—is her ultimate goal.