Dr. Lucia Romano

Lucia Romano got her PhD in Physics in 2006 from University of Catania (Italy). After a post-doc at University of Florida (Gainesville, USA), in 2009 she became assistant professor and researcher at the Department of Physics of University of Catania (Italy). In 2013, Lucia Romano was WP leader for the EU project WATER (REGPOT-2012-2013-1) taking care of setting up a new laboratory and a new research line at IMM-CNR in Catania (Italy) to study semiconductor nanostructures for water treatment. Lucia Romano is a committee member of the PhD school in material science and nanotechnology at University of Catania (Italy). In 2018, she qualified in Italy for Full Professorship (Sector: 02/B1).

In 2014, Lucia Romano joined the X-ray Tomography group at PSI as guest scientist and in 2016 she was guest professor at ETH Zurich. Lucia Romano is working at PSI to develop a new method of gratings fabrication for application in X-ray interferometric tomography.

Background in materials science for several kinds of applications, from fundamentals of semiconductors to nanotechnology, from microelectronics to environmental applications and X-ray Optics. Lucia Romano has a long experience in semiconductors applied research, ion beam modification of materials, materials characterization, microfabrication, clean room operation and equipment.

At the moment, Lucia Romano’s scientific research focuses on Metal Assisted Chemical Etching as a method for fabricating high aspect ratio structures in silicon, such as gratings for X-ray interferometry. Grating fabrication is the main bottleneck so far preventing grating-based X-ray phase-contrast interferometry from being applied at high energies and large field of view.  Lucia Romano is addressing fundamental open questions about the Metal Assisted Chemical Etching in order to fully explore the range of applications and the limits of this processing. Lucia Romano is also involved in the challenge of gratings fabrication for TOMCAT beamline and the PSI spin-off GratXray. She contributed to the several steps of microfabrication, such as lithography, etching, metallization, quality inspection and X-ray characterization.

For an extensive overview, we kindly refer you to our online publication repository DORA.

Lucia Romano published several special issues:

Micro- and Nano-Fabrication by Metal Assisted Chemical Etching (in Micromachines, 2020)

Material processing of optical devices and their applications (in Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing, 2019)

Defects in Semiconductors (in Semiconductors and Semimetals, 2015)

Lucia Romano is editor of Micromachines (IF 2.523)

An up-to-date and complete publication list can also be found at https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7696-7643

Romano, L., Vila-Comamala, J., Jefimovs, K., & Stampanoni, M. (2020). High‐aspect‐ratio grating microfabrication by platinum‐assisted chemical etching and gold electroplating. Advanced Engineering Materials, 2000258. DORA

Romano, L., & Stampanoni, M. (2020). Microfabrication of X-ray optics by metal assisted chemical etching: a review. Micromachines, 11(6), 589 (23 pp.). DORA

Romano, L., Kagias, M., Vila-Comamala, J., Jefimovs, K., Tseng, L. T., Guzenko, V. A., & Stampanoni, M. (2020). Metal assisted chemical etching of silicon in the gas phase: a nanofabrication platform for X-ray optics. Nanoscale Horizons, 5(5), 869-879. DORA

Lebugle, M., Dworkowski, F., Pauluhn, A., Guzenko, V. A., Romano, L., Meier, N., … David, C. (2018). High-intensity x-ray microbeam for macromolecular crystallography using silicon kinoform diffractive lenses. Applied Optics, 57(30), 9032-9039. DORA

Vila-Comamala, J., Romano, L., Guzenko, V., Kagias, M., Stampanoni, M., & Jefimovs, K. (2018). Towards sub-micrometer high aspect ratio X-ray gratings by atomic layer deposition of iridium. Microelectronic Engineering, 192, 19-24. DORA

Jefimovs, K., Romano, L., Vila-Comamala, J., Kagias, M., Wang, Z., Wang, L., … Stampanoni, M. (2017). High aspect ratio silicon structures by displacement Talbot lithography and Bosch etching. In C. K. Hohle (Ed.), Proceedings of SPIE: Vol. 10146. Advances in patterning materials and processes XXXIV. DORA

Romano, L., Vila-Comamala, J., Jefimovs, K., & Stampanoni, M. (2017). Effect of isopropanol on gold assisted chemical etching of silicon microstructures. Microelectronic Engineering, 177, 59-65. DORA

Romano, L., Vila-Comamala, J., Kagias, M., Vogelsang, K., Schift, H., Stampanoni, M., & Jefimovs, K. (2017). High aspect ratio metal microcasting by hot embossing for X-ray optics fabrication. Microelectronic Engineering, 176, 6-10. DORA

Romano, L., Vila-Comamala, J., Schift, H., Stampanoni, M., & Jefimovs, K. (2017). Hot embossing of Au- and Pb-based alloys for x-ray grating fabrication. Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B: Microelectronics and Nanometer Structures, 35(6), 06G302 (9 pp.). DORA

Romano, L., Kagias, M., Jefimovs, K., & Stampanoni, M. (2016). Self-assembly nanostructured gold for high aspect ratio silicon microstructures by metal assisted chemical etching. RSC Advances, 6(19), 16025-16029. DORA 

Institute for Biomedical Engineering, ETH Zurich (Switzerland)

Department of Physics, University of Catania (Italy)

Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems, CNR (Italy)