LEIT Project Research Presented at the INL Research Symposium 2026
The International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL), coordinator of the LEIT Project, held its annual research symposium from 15 to 17 April at its campus in Braga. LEIT is proud to have taken an active part in this flagship event, dedicated to showcasing the laboratory's major milestones.
Over the course of three days, the symposium featured an impressive range of contributions, including oral presentations, posters, and live demonstrations. In that sense, LEIT's own contributions were just as varied in format.
First, Prof. Clivia Sotomayor, Scientific Project Manager, led an insightful talk on the work carried out within LEIT. The presentation opened with the question "Can phonons transmit information?", capturing the audience's attention from the very first moment. Prof. Sotomayor went on to explain how phonons, the fundamental carriers of heat in materials, can be understood and potentially controlled not just for thermal management, but as energy-efficient carriers of information. As she noted, by investigating how nanoscale structure influences phonon behaviour, LEIT's research opens new perspectives on materials science, thermal transport, and information physics.
Knowledge-sharing continued beyond the auditorium, too, as a team of LEIT researchers presented a poster addressing the question: can we control phonon propagation in nanocrystalline silicon by tailoring its structure and morphology? Recognised with a poster prize, the research demonstrated that by engineering structural features such as grain boundaries, it is possible to tune thermal transport in nanocrystalline silicon.
Beyond the presentations themselves, the symposium offered a valuable opportunity to connect with colleagues, gain insight into their work, and identify exciting possibilities for internal collaboration.
Finally, the LEIT Project extends warm congratulations to the team behind this outstanding work: Tania Ribeiro, Tiago Magalhães, Manjunath Balagopalan, Gloria Conte, Houssem Rezgui, O. Ylivaara, Jouni Ahopelto, and Clivia M. Sotomayor Torres.
