Research

Energy Conversion

The efficient capture of solar energy through the use of semiconductors to generate hydrogen from water splitting (water photoelectrolysis) keeps being one of the biggest challenges in Energy Sciences. Hydrogen produced in this way can be used as clean fuel, being an option for fosil fuel-based sources. Photocatalysts currently available to be used in photolysis have low efficency, mainly, because they use the UV portion of solar spectrum, which represents only 4% of the total solar energy incident on the Earth’s surface. Visible light that is less energetic but more abundant is about 43% of the total solar energy incident on the Earth’s surface.

Consequently, any future teghnology that employs water photolysis for the production of hydrogen in a viable way, should be able to usea a substantial frcation of the visible solar spectrum. In this research line, CIEN-UC tries to explore manufacturing parameters for the elaboration of en efficient phocatalyst, based on hybrid nanostructure made up of carbon nanotubes decorated with hematite (?–?F2O3), titanium dioxide (TiO2) or copper oxide in its inner part.

Environmental Remediation and Control:

Contamination of air, soil and water by organic and toxic compounds, pesticides and heavy metals is a big problem around the world and difficult to be solved. It is required the existence of techologies that allow remediation and implementation of precautionary approaches. Methods based on the application of nanomaterials and environment control systems have shown amazing results, however, it is required to make progress regarding approaches and new knowledge that allow its application.

Nanomaterials particles have unique physico-chemical properties due to their surface/volume ratio with bigger reactivies than the same larger-sized material. Nevertheless, there are still problems of processes implementation from the laboratory scale (where the increase of reactivity in even hogher) to the application at industrial scale.

On the other hand, nanostruture given to the synthesized material might enable significant perfomance improvements, which highlight the importance of doing research on more efficient nanostructures, by understanding its conceptual design, functionality from a basic microscopic persperctive. It is then crucial for CIEN-UC to encourage interdisciplinary research in which researchers are involved in a coordinated way and thus, connecting basic sciences with applications that can be useful to boost innovation and konwledge creation in this area.

Bio-nanomaterials

A rising amount of excited scientists has been produced due to the combination of nanoscale devices with biological molecules to promote applications in biotehnology, giving birth to Bionanotechnology.

One of our objectives as Research Center is the study of biopfysical properties that allow the structure development, growth, phase transitions and dynamics of organic films, and also the basis development of different biosensors.

Another focus on research is the study of bionanomaterials in the environment as source of human exposure and their relation. It has been identified that ourdoors and indoors with suspended particles with aerodynamic sizes of 2.5 micrometers and even smaller, have shown to have harmful consequences for humans’ health, such as: Few respiratory symptoms, asthma, chronic obstructive lung disease which can increase premature deaths. In this regard, CIEN-UC tries to identify biological agents responsible for such harmful effects on humans’ health in order to suggest strategies used to decrease environmental risks.

Biocompatible Nanomaterials

Multidisciplinary skills combination in the area of Nanotechnology have granted information to comprehend our world in a nanometric scale and with great impact on medical and biological sciences.

Bionanotechnology has been developed quickly and the number of nanostructures in biocompatible materials and biological sensors has grown considerably. This has allowed the emergence of new techniques for molecular diagnosis and disease treatment. Despite of this big progress, we haven not been able to thoroughly understand interactions between nanometric materials and biological compunds. Achieving this knowledge is essential to improve current measurements techniques and elaborate new applications.

Having this in mind, we want to apply, to problems of bilogical interest, appropriate techniques of physical sciences such as metrology based on optical spectroscopies and the development of new materials through plasma discharges.

CIEN-UC focuses its effort on two research areas: The first one tries to use diamond nanocrystals and alumina nanoporous membranes as the basis of cells and biomolecules detectors; the second one develops new biocompatible materials. Both reesearch areas include the study of nanostructures surface interaction with biomolecules and cell tissue, considering the surfaces functionalization for selective measurements og biological agents.

Corrosion

The rapid progress of the Materials Science and its associate technologies have resulted in a great amount of new materials offering the opportunity to improve the performance or add functionalities. However, if we want these developments to be applied to actual devices, we need to show the specific applicability through characterization of technological pameters directed towards manufacture with the usea of these new materials.

Activities of this research line are focused on: design, production and characterization of studied materials by researchers of CIEN-UC with the purpose of integrating the acquired knowledge and skills to initiate interdisciplinary innovation in the following topics:

1. Characterization and modelling of the corrosion process of metallic materials.
2. Study of microstructural effects on technological properties of shape memory alloys.
3. Design and production of ferroelectric sensors for properties characterization of stem cells used in bone regeneration.

Functionalization of Materials

It is not always necessary to replace the whole device piece to fulfill a specific role, because in most of the applications processes determining functionality occur on the surface. In fact, many of the current multifuncitional materials require modification on their surfaces in order to optimize properties such as: friction, wear and corrosion resistance, among others.

Nowadays, the specific functionalization of diverse materials can be carried out through modification of properties of their surfaces by using the infrastructure and knowledge acquired by CIEN-UC researchers. The following cases will be studied:

1. Modification and functionalization of metallic surfaces through laser technology.
2. Functionalization of surfaces through anticorrosive coatings and wearproof on metals.

The study of polymers with optoelectronic properties has been such an interesting topic in the last twenty years.

Some of the applications of these materials are the elaboration of light emitting device (OLEDs), plastic conductors, smart windows and transistors.

In this research line we are interested in the synthesis of polymers with new structures, which are structurally, mechanically, chemically, optically and electronically characterized.

Plasma based techniques allow new chemical reactions from higly active radicals and also particle-surface interactions.

The biggest advantage of plasma based nanostructures synthesis is the high specific energy of reactants, wich allows non-standard nucleation processes and chemical reactions to occur.

This technique has been successful, specially in the elaboration of thin bonded films, in the production of new materials with higher properties and encapsulated nanocomposites.

This research line implies:

• The study of thin films growth and surface coatings in different substrates
• Synthesis and characterization of nanostructured materials.

1. Elaboration of Nanostructured Materials

The objective of this research line is to elaborate nanostructures through the usage of anodised aluminium oxide porous membranes, among others. This membranes is a thin film made up of highly ordered collinear pores with diameters in the range from 20 to 200nm. Since these films can be synthesized in microscopic areas (~cm2), it is possible to use them as masks to produce nanostrutures ordered matrices.

2. Hydrogen storage in metallic nanoclusters films.

In this research line we study hydrogen absorption in films made up of metallic nanolusters. These systems have two specific properties which make them potential candidates to be used in hydrogen storage processes:(i) increase in the internal surface and (ii) the possibility for the metallic cluster to absorb hydrogen, even though as material of large volume, does not do it.

In the Material Science Laboratory Faculty of Physics methods to detect hydrogen absorption due to changes in the visile light transmission and films resistance have been developed.

3. Multiferroic Heterostructures

Multiferroic materials have at least two of the so-called “ferroic properties”: ferroelasticity, ferroelectricity and ferromagnetism. The potential applications in multifunctional devices are: magnetic field sensores, current measurement probes, transductors, filters, oscillators among others.

In these systems, ferromagnetic magnetization and ferroelectric polarization are switching. This has generated huge interest in recording industry since it is possible to codify information separately.

Our interest will be focused on the manufacturing process of magnetic nanostructures on ferroelectric substrates, with the aim of manipulating multiferroic parameters and structural discrepancy with substrates.

4. Modelling and Characterization of Magnetic Nanostructures

Ferromagnetic nanostructures are currently one of the most studied systems at the magnetism area. This, mainly because of their applications in information reading and storage devices and sensors (i.e. spin valves and random access memory).Progress in this wide research field has resulted in emergence of a new type of electronics based on electron spin manipulation known as Spintronics.

The activies of this research line will be focused on the experimental and theoretical properties of layers, on magnetic multilayers and on new structures modelling.

The recent development combination at nanoscale with biological molecules for biotechnological applications has resulted in the emergence of Bionanotechnology field.

Some of the applications in this field include the creation of highly funtional systems such as biosensors, molecular and electronic circuits.

This research line is focused on:

• Structural and topographic characterization of solid surfaces at atomic level.
• Study of elemental processes of adsorption, film growth and long term stability of organic films on solid surfaces.
• Incorporation of lipid bilayers and proteins on solid surfaces.
• Semiempirical modelling of polymers properties for medical use.
• Molecular dynamics modeling of polymers for medical use.
• Development of magnetoresistance induced variable-stiffness elastomers.
• Application of polymers in edible films to improve shelf-life of food.
• Characterization and modeling of biomaterials.

Over the past decade, rapid progress in materials science and associated technologies has resulted in a large number of new materials that offer the potential to improve performance and/or add functionality.

The activities of this research line focus on the technological characterization of materials developed by other CIEN-UC researchers, specifically, this line of research is dedicated to:

• Characterization and modeling of corrosion.
• Diffusion study in macro, meso and microporous materials.
• Development and characterization of laser coatings.
• Development and characterization of shape memory alloys.
• Development of biocompatible ceramic materials to house adult stem cells.
• Characterization and modeling of microstructure and texture in alloys.
• Multiscale modeling of materials.
• Mono-crystalline and poly-crystalline plasticity