Each year the Rector sponsors a university-wide competition for two PhD positions in nanoscience, nanotechnology and functional materials, open to nano-active research groups in all faculties.

The results of this year’s competition are now out:

One position has been awarded to Jianying He and Helge Kristiansen from the Department of Structural Engineering to develop high thermal conductivity interface materials for metal/polymer interfaces; while the other has been awarded to Sverre Magnus Selbach, Mari-Ann Einarsrud and Sondre Kvalvåg Schnell from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering to develop high performance solid-state Li electrolytes for Li-ion batteries. 

We wish both research teams success with their projects, and look forward to reporting on their progress in future news items.

A new research centre is about to give Norway a window into how its rich mineral resources can be turned into useful – and more environmentally-friendly – materials.

The Norwegian national centre for minerals and materials characterisation, known as MiMaC for short, promises to look at every step of the process of turning minerals into materials. The centre is a joint project of NTNU, the Geological Survey of Norway and research company SINTEF.

When it’s fully up and running by the end of the year, it will be made up of five world-class instruments allowing researchers to look at materials in different ways, from the atomic scale up to the microscale.

But the crown jewel of the project is already in place: a state-of-the-art atom probe that can image materials in three dimensions. It works by using laser or high voltage pulses to evaporate away the tiny sample you put into the probe, pushing its way through a few atoms at a time.

“You can reconstruct exactly where every single atom is sitting,” says Jostein Mårdalen, head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering​ at NTNU. “We have a tool which is much more accurate - with higher resolution and better performance - than any other material science instrument available.”

As a national centre, MiMaC is open to scientists from other institutions who want to use its instruments. Mårdalen says he hopes that other researchers will take advantage of the atom probe to see objects such as fossils and even meteorites in a new light.

But the main reasoning behind MiMaC is more down to Earth. Using the centre’s instruments, researchers will look at the whole lifecycle of minerals: from their extraction and processing, to their design and production, and eventually their re-use or recycling.

Until now, neither research nor industry has had such a complete view, leading to inefficient ways of making materials. For example, a raw material might be stripped of impurities, only to have some new elements later added back in to make an alloy.

Now demand for greener materials is growing, Mårdalen hopes MiMaC will help both research and industry change. Seeing the full picture, he says, should allow researchers to come up with ways to make manufacturing processes less wasteful and better for the planet – for example, by finding new ways to use recycled materials. “The industry now is thinking how to be greener,” he says.

--Kelly Oakes, Mar 2019

Read more about the instruments available through MiMaC here.

At the border between physics and material science, Dennis Meier and his colleagues are searching for a new kind of electronics.

They hope to make circuits that are smaller, faster, and better for the environment than today’s electronics, by taking advantage of defects that already exist within materials. The electronic components the team have made so far are just a few atoms long, and could eventually be connected together to form circuits that measure mere nanometres across – far smaller than those we use today.

“We're working at the limit of what is doable in a solid-state system when you want to construct electronic components,” says Meier, a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering​ at NTNU.

The defects used to create these components are made when two parts of the same material have different properties. For example, their electric dipole moments – a measure of the distribution of charge in a material – might point in different directions. When these contrasting sections meet at an interface, they create what is known as a domain wall. The domain wall doesn’t behave like the rest of the material – for instance, it might be electrically conducting, even though the rest is an insulator.

So far Meier’s team have created two electrical components using domain walls: a digital switch and a half-wave rectifier. A rectifier turns alternating current that reverses direction regularly to direct current that just flows one way. The next step in his research is to connect components together. Once that’s possible, the team can start thinking about creating logic gates and doing some basic computing with the circuits.

Theoretically, circuits made with these materials could be tweaked when new technology demands it. “Once you have made your nanoscale circuit you can update it, you can upgrade it if needed, or even erase it and rewrite it – all within the same material,” says Meier.

Because domain walls occur naturally in materials, the production process should – in theory – be simple. “The interfaces are always there and they are perfect, no additional work is needed,” says Meier.

--Kelly Oakes, Mar 2019

 

 

 

I am delighted to report the appointment of Kelly Oakes as the new science writer for NTNU Nano. Kelly is a freelance writer who specialises in science, health, environment, and technology. Her work has been published in New Scientist, BBC Future, Nature, BuzzFeed, and many other publications. She has a degree in physics and a master's in science communication from Imperial College London. Please click here for lots more information about Kelly’s extensive experience in science journalism.

Kelly has just completed her first two articles for NTNU Nano, with more on the way. If you have interesting research to report and would like it communicated to the wider scientific community in a clear and accessible way, please get in touch! 

 

Congratulations to the master students in nanotechnology for a fun and informative set of talks at the Grey Goo Symposium on Feb 17. Some great science presented with humour and flair - learn more about what went on here.

(Published 18.02.2019)

You are hopefully aware that the Research Council of Norway (RCN) is changing the way it handles research proposals.  The biggest change is the introduction of a common 10^th April application deadline for most of its funding schemes. (Some schemes have deadlines in September, but these are mainly related to projects with industry involvement).

The RCN has introduced new portfolio boards updated its evaluation criteria (which now relate to “excellence”, “impact” and “implementation”), and introduced new templates for research proposals and investigator CVs. It has also placed some new restrictions on the number of applications that you can make as a principal investigator. You can find a helpful summary of the changes in this presentation. The following calls are likely to be the ones that are of most interest to nano-researchers: FRIPRO (basic research projects), Nano2021 (nanotechnology and advanced materials), BEDREHELSE (better health and quality of life), BEHANDLING (diagnostics, treatment and rehabilitation) and ENERGIX (energy research). However, nanoscience obviously has a valuable role to play in other programmes too, so be sure to check out all of the calls.

Unfortunately, if you are planning to resubmit an unsuccessful application from a previous funding call, then you will need to make substantial changes to its format and content to satisfy the new procedures. On the other hand, the changes do bring the RCN into closer alignment with Horizon 2020 criteria, so you will hopefully be able to use your RCN proposal as the basis for a future H2020 funding application.

Be aware that the move to a common once-per-year submission deadline means there are no “second chances” if your application is unsuccessful. You are therefore strongly advised to enlist the help of some trusted colleagues to review your proposal and suggest improvements to its structure and content; many departments are currently in the process of setting up formalised peer review procedures to assist with this.

One final warning, the common submission deadline is likely to place considerable pressure on your Department’s management and administrators, so please make sure you engage with them well in advance of the application deadline.

And remember, if you are planning to use any of the central infrastructures such as the NanoLab in your work, you will need to discuss the budget with their administrators too. Please contact the director of NTNU NanoLab, Peter Köllensperger if you need advice regarding choice of processes and budgeting.

Don’t delay – the clock is ticking!

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Peter Köllensperger as the new Director of NTNU Nanolab. Peter is already well known to many NanoLab users, having acted as the interim Director since August 2017. With an interesting and varied background that has spanned the academic and commercial worlds, Peter has a great understanding of the diverse needs of the Lab's academic and industrial users. After graduating from Imperial College London with a PhD in biomedical engineering, he began his professional career in investment banking at Jefferies International, specialising in the pharma, biotech and medtech sectors. He returned to Imperial to take up a Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellowship, developing nanostructured electrochemical biosensors. A Marie Curie Fellowship brought him to NTNU in 2014, and he has been closely involved with the NanoLab ever since. We wish him every success in his new(ish) role!

November was the month of our thirteenth “nano symposium”, which took place at NTNU’s Kalvskinnet campus in central Trondheim. With well over a hundred participants from across NTNU, this two-day annual event has always been one of the best opportunities to learn about the amazing breadth of nano-related research happening at the university. This year’s meeting was no exception. The presentations covered a wealth of topics, including the synthesis of nanomaterials and nanostructured surfaces, the development of new sensor technologies, solar energy, quantum computing and many more. This year’s prize for the best oral presentation went to Anders Strømberg whose talk “Unconventional Computing with Artificial Spin Ice” described how two-dimensional lattices of interacting nanomagnets offer an efficient and highly parallel approach to computation. The prize for best poster went to Stephanie Burgmann, a first-year PhD student who impressed the judges with her firm grasp of detail. You can find a complete list of the talks and posters, including abstracts by clicking here(pdf).

In addition to the participants from NTNU, we were also fortunate to have two external speakers at the meeting, Prof. Andrew de Mello from ETH, Zurich (who spoke on the application of microfluidics to ultra-high-throughput chemistry and biology) and Dr. Wilhelm Glomm from Sintef Industry (who described how micro- and nano-encapsulation technologies can be applied to food production and healthcare). Many thanks to them both for their inspiring and well-pitched talks. And finally, a big thank you to Hanna Gautun and Berit Myhre for their immense efforts in putting together such an enjoyable and well-planned programme!

John de Mello, the new director of NTNU Nano, reports on NTNU’s hosting of the International Nanoscience Student Conference, INASCON 2018

I arrived in Trondheim in early August, which very fortunately coincided with NTNU’s hosting of the International Nanoscience Student Conference August 7-10. This student-run, three-day meeting will definitely go down as one of my personal highlights of the year. In the months running up to the meeting, I had the opportunity to watch the conference plans take shape, and I was ‘blown away’ by the professionalism and creativity of the student management team. Arranging a conference with 142 participants from across the globe is a huge undertaking; and, in this case, it was made doubly tough by the need to squeeze in all of the preparations between work assignments, research projects, and exam revision!

Through an impressive mixture of ambition and perseverance, the INASCON team put together an outstanding programme of talks and events, securing a superb line-up of world-leading experts in numerous aspects of nanotechnology (including the 2002 and 2016 Nobel chemistry laureates Kurt Wüthrich and Sir Fraser Stoddart). The diversity of talks was immense, covering self-assembly, molecular machinery, photonics, electronics, analytical science, imaging, healthcare, potential solutions to the energy crisis and many other central topics in nanoscience. Added to this were live demonstrations, panel sessions on battery technology and commercialisation, and a number of fun interactive sessions (including, a little oddly, a group rendition of “Hode, skulder, kne og tå” complete with actions).

All in all, there was a great balance of education and entertainment that kept the audience 'captivated' from beginning to end. I offer my congratulations to the whole INASCON team for putting together one of the best organised and most enjoyable conferences that I have attended in my career to date. And I wish the very best of luck to the students at Tsinghua University in Beijing, who will be hosting the next INASCON conference in July 2019

Don’t miss it!