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Over the past fiscal year, LEO has continued to evolve with one goal in mind: making research operations more efficient, transparent, and user-friendly. While many of these improvements happen behind the scenes, their impact is felt every day across our user community. This issue highlights key enhancements and tools that are helping streamline workflows, improve access, and support high-quality research.

Key Highlights

Bridging Growth, Characterization, and Community

July 2026 marks an exciting milestone for Dr. Maria Hilse, who was recently promoted to associate research professor at Penn State. Her work spans fundamental materials research, user facility operations, mentorship, and scientific service.

2DCC CHet system enables synthesis of 2D metals, alloys, and functionalized graphene

Confinement heteroepitaxy (CHet) is an emerging approach for stabilizing atomically thin metals and alloys that normally prefer to form 3D structures by confining their growth at interfaces such as graphene. This enables access to truly two-dimensional metallic phases with unusual electronic and optical properties. This opens new directions in quantum materials and nanoscale device engineering.

Ryan Hawks joins the Nanofab technical staff team as a research engineer.

We're excited to announce that the ClassOne Solstice electroplating and wet processing system is currently undergoing factory acceptance testing and is on track to ship in May 2026.

The tool will be temporarily installed in the Nanofab in June 2026, with copper electroplating capability available to users right away. Once the cleanroom expansion is complete in late 2026 or early 2027, the Solstice will move to its permanent home with its full suite of capabilities online.

MCL hosted a Town Hall on Tuesday, May 12, which focused on engaging with the lab in the early stages of research. Working together early fosters better culture, outcomes, training, and data.

Highlighted during the session:

With LEO, staff can qualify users individually or in batches once they have successfully completed the required instrument training. A simple one‑click promotion or demotion allows staff to toggle a user between limited and full qualifications—making the management of user capability fast, transparent, and consistent.