The Independent Activities Period (IAP) is a special term at MIT that runs from early January until the end of the month. IAP provides members of the MIT community (students, faculty, staff, and alums) with a unique opportunity to organize, sponsor and participate in a wide variety of activities, including how-to sessions, forums, athletic endeavors, lecture series, films, tours, recitals, and contests.
Make your own chip inside the lab!
Instructors: Jorg Scholvin, Associate Director Fab.nano; Kurt Broderick, Research Associate; Maansi Patel, Research Specialist
Dates & times: multiple date & times offered throughout January
Location: MIT.nano Cleanroom, meet in 12-3005
MIT students, staff, and faculty registration
Alumni registration: email Kelly Gavin
If you are unaffiliated with MIT, but would like to make a special request to take this class, contact Kelly.
Step inside MIT.nano's fab to create a 1x1 inch chip with your favorite image to take home with you! We will work inside the MIT.nano cleanroom: learn how to gown up, understand the different fab tools, and use the tools to pattern a 50nm thin layer of aluminum with your design. At the end, we will separate out the chips from the wafer, and you get a chance to put your chip in a small frame or carrier to take with you.
Into the Structure-Verse: An introduction to crystallographic structure determination with x-rays and electrons
Instructors: Aubrey Penn, Research Specialist; Jordan Cox, Research Specialist
Date: Wednesday, January 15 and Thursday, January 16, 2025
Time: 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Location: MIT.nano Building 12 Room 5001
Registration Limited to 10 participants. This is a two-day course; participants must attend both days.
This course is designed to introduce attendees to best practices in crystallographic structure determination with x-rays and electrons. Attendees will learn about XRD, electron diffraction, and scanning transmission electron microscopy on crystalline materials, with a primary focus on data analysis. A hands-on lab will be offered for XRD structure model refinement as well as an introduction to image analysis with the python package Atomap. Previous python experience is not required, but attendees will find introductory experience helpful. It is encouraged that attendees download anaconda before the course begins. This will be a 2-day course: one day for X-rays and one day for electrons.
A brief introduction to e-beam lithography
Instructors: Mark K. Mondol, ebeam Domain Expert; Juan Ferrera, Research Scientist
Date: Thursday, January 23, 2025
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Location: MIT.nano, Building 12 Room 0168 (basement teaching space)
Registration Limited to 40 participants
E-beam lithography enables advanced semiconductor chips; without e-beam lithography minimum feature sizes would be limited to approximately 200nm. In research environments, e-beam lithography allows direct write, maskless lithography enabling quick and relatively cheap design changes.
This talk introduces the basics of e-beam lithography and pattern transfer, including electron energy, material interaction, limits to resolution, e-beam resists, throughput, proximity effect correction, and characteristics of different e-beam lithography tools.
Anyone with an interest in e-beam lithography from neophyte to experienced user should be able to gain something from this talk.
Biomechanics of Piano Playing
Instructors: Praneeth Namburi, Research Scientist; Mi-Eun Kim, Lecturer, Pianist
Date: Thursday, January 16, 2025
Time: 9:30 AM - 5:00 PM
Location: MIT.nano, Building 12 Room 3216
Registration Limited to 10 participants
This course will introduce biomechanical measurements in the context of piano playing. In this course, you will learn how to use motion capture, accelerometers, and ultrasound imaging to visualize signals from the body during piano playing. At the moment, this course is open to experienced pianists only. You will be expected to participate in class discussions.