Understand and mimic materials properties
At SDU we characterise nanostructures to advance our understanding of the interplay between materials structure, chemical composition and function. We create nanostructures and functional nanoparticles to mimic natural materials and their functions, and we give those materials additional functionality.
Our activities include the following research topics and projects:
Functional nanoparticles
Already today, nanoparticles are applied in a variety of fields, from photonics and electronics to biology and quantum applications. These fields will most likely even extend in the future. It is therefore of fundamental interest to develop such particles tailored to specific applications by, e.g., creating specific surface morphologies or via surface functionalisation. We develop different kind of metal oxide, bimetallic and ferromagnetic nanoparticles for molecular sensing, catalysis, electrochemical applications, CO2 capture and more.
Organic thin-films
Organic materials are a key ingredients for modern technology due to the possibility to change structure and properties of the molecules via well-known chemical approaches. This results in hitherto unknown possibilities to, e.g., design the molecules for upscaling and thus developing truly green technologies. Examples include flexible organic solar cells and organic light-emitting diodes. In our research we focus on understanding the interplay between structural and electronic properties in films made of those molecules by correlating high-resolution imaging techniques with time-resolved photoluminescence lifetime spectroscopy. From our data we can learn, for example, about charge carrier dynamics in the thin-films and at material boundaries and interfaces.
Quantum materials
Electronic devices based on conventional materials and classical physics meet a performance bottleneck upon the increasing demand of a larger integration density, a faster data processing speed, a lower power dissipation and safer data storage and transfer. Quantum materials hold the key to the door of the post-silicon information era. We have specific interest in the changed properties of ultrathin nanodiamond films or structures as a function of temperature, magnetic field and pressure. Examples include conducting-superconducting transitions and applications as next generation super wide bandgap electronic elements.
