László Péter Biró - Biography#

The research career of Prof. Biró has started in single crystal growth at the Institute for Isotopic and Molecular Technology (Cluj-Napoca, Romania). In the period 1984 - 1990, Prof. Biró worked in the same institute on the growth, sensitization and characterization of PbSe thin film IR detectors. In 1991 Prof. Biró has moved to Budapest to the Research Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science (MFA). He used scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) to investigate the surface modification induced by ion irradiation, he developed several new methods for the characterization of irradiated samples.

In the period 1998 - 2003, Prof. Biró was appointed for the founding and heading of the Nanostructures Laboratory in the MFA, carbon nanotubes are in the focus of his research. As a recognition of his achievements, in the year 2000 Prof. Biró is the Director of a NATO Advanced Study Institute he organized in Budapest focusing on carbon nanotubes and carbon filaments.

In the period 2003 - 2005 in the focus of Prof. Biró’s work are various carbon nanotube type nanoarchitectures, like regularly coiled carbon nanotubes, Y-junctions, etc. In 2005 he obtains the title of Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

In 2004 Prof. Biró is appointed Head of the Nanotechnology Department in the MFA.

Since 2003 Prof. Biró becomes interested in biologic and bioinspired materials: in photonic crystal type nanoarchitectures occurring in the scales of butterflies. He and his collaborators contribute to the founding of a new research direction focusing on the materials science and physical, biogeographic, and biologic aspects of the photonic nanoarchitectures of biologic origin.

Since 2005 Prof. Biró has shifted the focus of his work on carbon nanostructures to graphene and other novel 2D materials. Under his supervision several new methods were developed that allow the crystallographically controlled nanopatterning of graphene and other 2D materials.