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Project Database

Met financiële steun van het platform Bèta-techniek en de STEM Teacher Academy, geeft de Stichting FOM komend schooljaar opnieuw acht vwo-docenten natuurkunde de gelegenheid om naast hun reguliere onderwijsfunctie maximaal één jaar onderzoek te doen en geeft NWO daarnaast, voor het eerst dit jaar, acht docenten scheikunde de gelegenheid om één jaar onderzoek te doen.

Het Zernike Institute is een van de partners van het programma en coordinator voor activiteiten in Groningen. Binnen het facultaire thema advanced materials van de Faculty of Science and Engineering zijn er verschillende projecten in de disciplines scheikunde en natuurkunde beschikbaar. De lijst hieronder wordt momenteel nog verder uitgewerkt. Heeft u vragen? Mail dan naar j.p.birkner rug.nl en wij proberen u zo spoedig mogelijk te helpen.

Chemistry related projects

• Electrochemical synthesis - Prof.dr. W. R. Browne
The direct use of electrochemical energy to drive chemical synthesis can be highly efficient in terms of energy costs. The key challenge in this project is to reeingineer reaction conditions to adapt to the requirements of electrochemistry.

• Synthesis and electronic properties of hybrid materials - Prof.dr. T.T.M. Palstra
Materials are traditonally classified as being organic or inorganic. In recent years it has become apparent that combining organic and inorganic blocks in 3 dimensional structures provides enormous opportunities. The functionality of the inorganic block can be tuned by the architecture of the organic block. Examples are the perovskite solar cell materials, multiferroics combining electric and magnetic order and novel superconductors. The research program encompasses the synthesis of the materials, the crystallography to determine crystal structures and the measurement of the electrical and magnetic properties.

Physics related projects

Control capillary forces via surface roughening (combination of theoretical & experimental work)- Prof.dr. G. Palasantzas
When two bodies are separated by a small distance surface roughness starts to play an important role in the interaction between the bodies, their adhesion, and friction. Control of this short-distance interaction is crucial for micro and nanoelectromechanical devices, microfluidics, and for micro and nanotechnology. Because of the very small sizes involved in micro and nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS), surface forces are dominant, and they can generate a malfunction some of the devices or making fabrication impossible. The problem is spontaneous stiction between separate device elements. This is an important limitation in bringing MEMS to the broader market. MEMS structures are typically made by forming a layer of material on top of a sacrificial layer above another material with the following wet etching of the sacrificial layer. Drying after rinsing is the final fabrication step can collapse such microstructures resulting in permanent adherence. Strong capillary forces pull the surfaces together but when the liquid is dried out the surfaces can stuck permanently due to presence of the dispersion forces.Atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements (in the sphere-plate geometry) have shown that the capillary force can change by more two orders in magnitude by a change of only less than 10 nm of the surface roughness. Moreover, coating with different materials the components and environmental aging can influence the adhesion.The goal of the project will be to describe capillary force data versus surface roughness using extreme value statistical analysis of the corresponding topographies (obtained by AFM) used also for the force measurements.

• Casimir forces in nonlinear dynamics of microactuators (theory project) - Prof.dr. G. Palasantzas
Nowadays fluctuation induced electromagnetic Casimir/van der Waals forces between bodies at submicrometer proximity are becoming increasingly important for applications. Casimir forces are expected to become significant as components of MEMS enter submicrometer separations. The small scales at which MEM engineering is now conducted have revived interest in the Casimir force since devices such as vibration sensors and switches are made with parts that are just a few micrometers in size. They have the right size for the Casimir force to play a role: the surface areas are sufficiently big and the separations are sufficiently small for the force to draw components together and lock them tight, an effect called stiction. Whereas electrostatic forces can be limited by reducing the voltage between the surfaces, and the influence of hydrodynamic and capillary forces can be avoided by letting the device operate in a clean, dry environment the Casimir force will always be present. Therefore, unlike the other surface forces, the Casimir force hence imposes a principal limit on MEMS applications for actuation at short separations (< 200 nm) because of stiction instabilities that can be enhanced by chaotic motion. Therefore there is interest to investigate the non-linear dynamics of electrostatically driven MEMS under the influence of the Casimir force for interacting materials with different measured optical properties, and different degrees of surface roughness. Moreover, under conditions of dynamical actuation in ambient the influence of residual attractive Capillary and repulsive Hydrodynamic drag forces will also be considered.

Last modified:01 February 2017 3.11 p.m.