Case Studies

Qi, X., Pérez, L.A., Mendoza-Carreño, J. et al. Chiral plasmonic superlattices from template-assisted assembly of achiral nanoparticles. Nature Commun. 16, 1687 (2025). 

L.A. Pérez, J. Hu, J. Mendoza-Carreño, M. Garriga, M. Isabel Alonso, O. Arteaga, A. R. Goñi, A. Mihi

Strong Chiro-Optical Activity of Plasmonic Metasurfaces with Inverted Pyramid Arrays ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 17, 10, 15824–15835 (2025).

ICMAB-CSIC – Nanophotonics Group: Soft Nanoimprint Lithography for Optoelectronics 

The Nanophotonics Group at ICMAB specializes in soft nanoimprint lithography to design and integrate scalable, versatile photonic architectures into a wide range of optoelectronic devices and optical systems, significantly enhancing their performance and efficiency.

A key part of this research relies on rapid access to high-quality nanostructures acting as original master patterns. Through our collaboration with ConScience, we benefit from their ability to deliver precise, reproducible nanostructures with speed and reliability—laying the foundation for much of our experimental work.

“The ability to quickly access high-quality nanostructures from ConScience has been essential to our research. Their support enables us to explore advanced photonic architectures with confidence.”
— Dr. Agustin Mihi, Nanophotonics Group, ICMAB

Whitley, K.D., Jukes, C., Tregidgo, N. et al.FtsZ treadmilling is essential for Z-ring condensation and septal constriction initiation in Bacillus subtiliscell division. Nature Commun. 12, 2448 (2021). 

Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology in the University of Newcastle, UK (Dr. Seamus Holden):
Microfabricated Vertical Traps for Bacteria

A group of researchers from the University of Newcastle developed a microfluidic trap—a nanopillar wafer—for vertical cell imaging (the method was named VerCINI). They wished to make the method easily available for other researchers without license restrictions or any financial benefit to themselves. Finding a supplier proved to be difficult—the nanopillar wafer has a complex design and the number of products needed is too small for a large-scale commercial fabrication. Demands on complexity, high precision, and a too-small volume are a core problem for many start-up companies and researchers who rely on micro- and nanofabrication, and this is exactly where our strength lies.

ConScience has developed a smooth process for fabrication of nanopillar wafers for the VerCINI method and supports the follow-up research.

Insplorion:
Nanoplasmonic sensors

The Gothenburg-based company Insplorion makes nanoplasmonic sensors used in their research instruments, and for hydrogen and air-quality sensing. Insplorion has its own nanofabrication but needed support to streamline and scale up.

Together with our team, they were able to improve their process, enabling faster fabrication of a higher number of products, highly specialized cleanroom processing, and standardized quality control.

UCSD Biological Sciences

(Dr. Suckjoon Jun):
High-precision custom microfluidics

The Jun lab at UCSD works with biological systems where Suckjoon Jun invented the mother machines concept - allowing for unprecented tracking of microbial cultures.

At the time, the Jun lab wanted to upgrade their mother machines designs and so needed new molds. They reached out to ConScience to assist them in building a custom designed mother machine mold.

Our team custom designed a mold for them which was lower cost and better performance than their original design. They were very happy with what we provided to them and have been a repeat customer ever since. In a tweet, Suckjoon Jun made the following statement:

“We endorse them. We designed & ordered multiplex #mothermachine from them about a year ago. They delivered an excellent product. The price was reasonable, certainly far less than what it cost us back in 2008 at Harvard for the first #mothermachine. We will use them again.” Prof. Suckjoon Jun, Inventor of mother machines