Centre for Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies

"C2N" redirects here. For Commodore's magnetic tape data storage device, see Commodore Datasette.

The Centre for Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies (French: Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies de l'université Paris-Saclay) or C2N, is a nanotechnology laboratory created as joint research unit (UMR 9001) between the University of Paris-Saclay and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).^[2]

Centre for Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies

Focus	Nanoscience
Head	Giancarlo Faini (director),[1]
Owner	University of Paris-Saclay, CNRS
Location	Palaiseau , France
Website	www.c2n.universite-paris-saclay.fr/en/

CNRS and the university announced this collaboration in 2013, with the goal of uniting two existing laboratories of Ile-de-France: the Institute for Fundamental Electronics (Institut d'Electronique Fondamentale, IEF) and the Laboratory for Photonics Nanostructures (Laboratoire de Photonique et de Nanostructures, LPN).^[3]

Facility construction began in April, 2015, the first stone was laid on June 28, 2016, and the C2N facility began operations in September, 2017.^[4] It is located on the Paris-Saclay campus in Palaiseau, 20 miles south of Paris, France.^[2]

According to the European Union's MIR-Bose project, "The Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (C2N) is one of the largest laboratories of University Paris-Sud with 283 members including 83 permanent researchers, 160 PhD students and post-doctoral researchers and 40 technical and administrative staff members."^[5]

Research areas

The core of the research is based silicon and III-V nano-electronics, nanomagnetism (spintronics), micro- and nano-photonics (III-V and silicon photonics), and nanosystems (manufacturing and characterization.) It has four main divisions:

• Photonics department,
• Materials Department,
• Nanoelectronics Department,
• Microsystems and Nanobiofluidics Department.^[6][1]

The C2N is one of three major French centers of research on nanotechnology (the other two are in Grenoble and Toulouse.)^[3] Several other related research groups are located near Paris-Saclay, including Thales, and STMicroelectronics. Scientists from other institutions visit C2N to make use of its single-photon source.^[7]

C2N researchers fabricated a chip used as the miniature "particle collider" that produced the first solid confirmation of the quasiparticles anyons, a scientific collaboration with ENS researchers that was featured on the cover of Science.^[8][9]