Chemical materials science & Nanostructured materials | Inorganic Materials Science (IMS)

Besides physical deposition techniques, a part of the IMS group uses chemical synthesis routes to fabricate novel nanostructured oxide materials. Examples of these are micropatterned oxide films for electronics and sensors, nanotubes for application in nanofluidic devices, nanoporous ceramic membranes, and hybrid organosilane thin films. Also solid-state electrochemical applications like SOFCs are being investigated.

At this moment, several projects are carried out in this research area:

Development of microporous hybrid membranes Hybrid microporous silica membranes that can be used as an energy efficient separation of small molecules, have still a limited chemical resistance. Doping of the amorphous material with transition metals could solve the prolem.

Functional oxide nanoparticles Barium titanate (BTO) is used as high-k dielectric phase in multi-layer ceramic capacitors (MLCC).

Micropattern (large)

Nanowires and nanocubes During the last couple of years, synthetic procedures for the production of electrochemically synthesized nanowires have been developed in the Inorganic Materials Science lab.

Self Assembled Monolayers (SAMs) on ultrasmooth metal oxide surfaces Briefly speaking, this project is focusing on Self Assembled Monolayers (SAMs) on ultrasmooth (atomically flat) metal oxide surfaces.

Soft-lithographic patterning of oxide films The micromolding in channels (MIMIC) technique is used to pattern ceramic suspensions and sol-gel precursors, where the patterns have periodicities typically between 1 and 5 µm.

Solid state electro-chemistry Several solid inorganic oxide systems show appreciable conductivity for oxygen ions. An important application of this property is found in the so-called Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs).