NanoMicroMech Lab, Brown

The Nano & Micromechanics Laboratory is part of the Mechanics of Solids and Structures Group in School of Engineering at Brown University. It was established in 1989 as the Micromechanics Laboratory, and started nanomechanics research in 1990. Research and education carried out in this laboratory are associated with the experimental, computational and theoretical study of nanomechanics and micromechanics of materials.

Fabrication and characterization of nano-structures are also carried out with the facilities of national and international nanotechnology networks such as NNIN, KIST, KIMM etc.

♦ News on our recent Nanostructures Research:

- Metal Surfaces reshaping by Ion Bombardment (1,2)
- Nanopipe (1,2), Nanotube (3,4) and Nanoasperity (5,6) ♦ Brown Research (link)
- Nanotribology (1,2,3)

- SWCNT cutting by Sonication (1,2,3)

Advice for young experimentalists

Development of freshman laboratory - Bow and Arrow

Nanopipe research appears
in featured highlights of
NSF front page

NSF Workshop and
Freund Symposium

Welcome to Kim Group

Seminars & Workshops

Lab & Alumni News

09/10/12 Congratulations! Prof. Shuman Xia, former Ph.D. student, will receive the ASME Orr Early Career Award during Int’l Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition of ASME 2012.

09/07/12 Dr. Mingfa Yang, former Ph.D. student, visited the lab with his family.

09/01/12 Welcome the postdoctoral research fellow, Sang-Pil Kim and the new grad students, Ruike Zhao and Bojun Yan to join our group.

07/02/12 Cheng Zhang and Yu Liu, who come from Hsue-Shen Tsien Elite Class in Mechanics, Tsinghua University, join our group for summer student internship. Welcome!

06/24-29/12 Professor Kim presented a talk “Dynamic Behavior of Materials at the Nanometer Scale,” at the International Symposium on Current Problems in Solid Mechanics in Honor of Professor R. J. Clifton, at Symi, Greece.

04/28/12 Congratulations! Prof. Jun Lou, our lab alumnus, has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at Rice University.

04/05/12 Professor Kim was invited to give a talk on “Hybrid Analysis of Nanostructural Evolution Near FCC Metal Surfaces and Interfaces,” Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Seminar Series at Northwestern University.

03/27/12 Professor Kim gave an invited talk on “Nanostructural Evolution Near FCC Solid Surfaces and Interfaces,” ME Seminars hosted by Junlan Wang at University of Washington.

03/19/12 Congratulations to Prof. Huck Beng Chew, former postdoctoral research associate. Prof. Huck Beng Chew has had a new baby born.

03/16/12 Professor Kim was awarded the distinguished alumni award of 2012 KWANAK DAESANG from the alumni association of Seoul National University.

03/01/12 Professor Kim gave a talk “Continuum Description of Atomistics for Nanomechanics of Grain Boundary Embrittlement in FCC Metals” in APS March Meeting, held by American Physical Society at Boston, MA.

01/19/12 Professor Kim will receive the 2012 Engineering Science Medal from the Society of Engineering Science (SES) during the 49th Annual Technical Meeting of the Society to be held at Georgia Institute of Technology from October 9-12, 2012. (news)

12/13/11 Congratulations to Prof. Qunyang Li, former Ph.D. student, published “Frictional ageing from interfacial bonding and the origins of rate and state friction,” in Nature with his colleagues at UPenn and Brown. (news)

12/09/11 Professor Jisoon Ihm from Seoul National University takes his sabbatical in our lab for collaborative research.

12/02/11 Dr. Yong Kin Yew from National University of Singapore visited our lab for research collaborations.

11/26/11 Congratulations! Professor Qunyang Li, former Ph.D. student. Prefessor Li has had a new baby born on 11/26/11.

11/15/11 Professor Kim gave an invited talk on “Mechanics of Nanostructures:
Hybrid Analysis of Ion Bombardment; Computation/Experiment/Modeling” in Drucker Medalist (John Rudnicki) Symposium, ASME Congress 2011.

11/11/11 Congratulations! Dr. Qunyang Li, our PhD alum, has been awarded by the "Thousand Young Talents Program" (The Recruitment Program of Global Young Experts). The program was created by the Chinese government and aimed to attract the best global young researchers to work in China and the news was announced on 11/11/11 by the Chinese government. Dr. Li was appointed as Associate Professor at Tsinghua University in China this year. (news)

10/20/11 Congratulations Dr. Sangjin Ryu, former postdoctoral research associate, for starting his tenure track Assistant Professorship at the University of Nebraska from November 1.

10/14/11 Dr. Mazen Diab presented a talk on "Wrinkling of Nanostructured Thin Films on a Soft Substrate for Renewable Energy Storage" at the SES Meeting held at Northwestern University.

♦ Teng Zhang, Zuoqi Zhang, Kyung-Suk Kim and Huajian Gao, “An accordion model integrating self-cleaning, strong attachment and easy detachment functionalities of gecko adhesion,” Journal of Adhesion Science and Technology, Published online. DOI: 10.1080/01694243.2012.691788, Aug 2012.

♦ Sang-Pil Kim, Huck Beng Chew, Eric Chason, Vivek B. Shenoy and Kyung-Suk Kim, “Nanoscale mechanisms of surface stress & morphology evolution in FCC metals under noble-gas ion bombardments,” Proceedings of the Royal Society A, Published online. DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2012.0042, May 2012.

♦ H.-G. Kim, H. B. Chew and K.-S. Kim, "Inverse extraction of cohesive zone laws by field projection method using numerical auxiliary fields," International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, Published online by Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/nme.4281, April 2012.

♦ Jeong-Yun Sun, Shuman Xia, Myoung-Woon Moon, Kyu Hwan Oh and Kyung-Suk Kim, “Folding wrinkles of a thin stiff layer on a soft substrate,” Proceedings of the Royal Society A, vol. 468(2140), pp. 932-953, April 2012.

♦ Z. Zhang, Y. W. Zhang, T. Zhang, K.-S. Kim and H. Gao., “Strain-controlled switching of hierarchically wrinkled surfaces between superhydrophobicity and superhydrophilicity,” Langmuir, vol. 28(5), pp. 2753-2760, February 2012.

♦ H. B. Chew, M.-W. Moon, K. R. Lee and K.-S. Kim, “Compressive dynamic scission of carbon nanotubes under sonication: fracture by atomic ejection,“ Proceedings of the Royal Society A, vol. 467(2129), pp. 1270-1289, 2011.

♦ C.-K. Wang, H. B. Chew and K.-S. Kim, “Nanometer scale mechanical behavior of grain boundaries,” MRS Proceedings, vol. 1297, pp.1-9, 2011.

♦ H. B. Chew, M.-W. Moon, K. R. Lee and K.-S. Kim, “Nature Nanotechnology: Pressed to breaking point,” Research Highlight, Nature, vol. 468, pp.870–871, 2010.

♦ Q.G. Wang, M. Praud, A. Needleman, K.-S. Kim, J.R. Griffiths, C.J. Davidson, C.H. Cáceres and A.A. Benzerga, “Size Effects in Aluminium Alloy Castings,” Acta Materialia, vol. 58(8), pp. 3006-3013, 2010.

♦ S.O. Kim, Y.Y. Earmme and K.-S. Kim, “Useful conservation sums in molecular dynamics and atomistics,” Mathematics and Mechanics of Solids, vol. 15(8), pp. 885-895, 2010.

♦ Yudi Rahmawan, Myoung-Woon Moon, Kyung-Suk Kim, Kwang-Ryeol Lee, and Kahp-Yang Suh, “Wrinkled, Dual-Scale Structures of Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) for Superhydrophobicity,” Langmuir, vol. 26(1), pp. 484-491, 2010.