Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "NANOFIB: Nano fibrious materials - structure, design and application." "Christian Clasen" "Soft Matter, Rheology and Technology (SMaRT)" "The performance and physical attributes of a material and product can be tailored to so far unmatched material strengths and properties by creating new nano fibrous structures from polymers by electrospinning. The electrospinning process uses an electric field to produce charged jets of polymer solutions or melts. Bending instabilities of the jet, caused by the surface charge, lead to extremely high local extension rates of the jet and produce fibres with diameters of the order of a few nanometer that consist of highly aligned polymer strands. However, the biggest unsolved problem of the electrospinning process is the sensitive equilibrium between surface tension, viscosity, elasticity and conductivity of the polymer solutions. These are controlled by molecular parameters as the molar mass, chemical microstructure, conformation in solution or supramolecular structures via intermolecular interactions. The optimal combination of these parameters is, as yet, unknown. Within this project, a novel and unique technical platform will be developed and installed, that is generally capable to image and analyse high speed free surface flows in miniaturised dimensions. This platform will then be utilized to analyse electrospinning process parameters and to connect them to the material properties and the molecular structure of the polymer solution. Only such a fundamental understanding of the relation of these properties to the flow and mass transfer phenomena on the micro-time and -dimensional scale will allow to design in the second part of this project the required structural and material properties of nano-scale fibres for: -novel fibre/matrix composites for the creation of ultra-high-strength hydrogel membranes; -short fibre morphologies created by a novel controlled disruptive spinning process at the boundaries of the parameter space; -tailoring of fibre properties from renewable resources by modification of the chemical side-chain structure of polysaccharides." "Dye-sensitized up/down conversion in lanthanide nano materials" "Rik Van Deun" "Department of Chemistry" "Inorganic lanthanide-doped nano particles decorated with organic dyes will be synthesized and optimized towards up and down conversion, to obtain state-of-the-art materials that will enable wavelength conversion of parts of the solar spectrum, in order to increase the efficiency in photovoltaic technology. Making use of lanthanide coordination chemistry, highly efficient as well as stable luminescent nano materials will be developed" "Infra-Red Analyses from Macro to Nano Scales. From Novel Self-healing Materials to Jurassic Dinosaur Bone Cells" "Herman Terryn" "Art Sciences and Archaeology, History, Chemical Engineering and Industrial Chemistry, Department of Bio-engineering Sciences, Multidisciplinary Archaeological Research Institute, Chemistry, Analytical, Environmental & Geo-Chemistry, Materials and Chemistry" "Recently, several departments (SKAR, AMGC & SURF) initiated the development of an analytical multi-disciplinary and interfaculty platform (Hercules 2013) through the acquisition of a complementary set of X-Ray based equipment. It has enabled many inter-disciplinary projects ranging from documenting the chemical composition of Antarctic micrometeorites all the way to that of the “Manneken Pis”, which even attracted attention of the BBC! A new dynamic has arisen between the teams as illustrated by the Archaeology, Conservation, Palaeontology Interdisciplinary Group (ArCPIG) recently created by PhD's and Post-docs uniting palaeontologists, archaeologists and chemical engineers around material analyses.This proposal takes this analytical venture one step further and leverages the multi-disciplinary research and its unique character within the VUB." "Nano scaled functionalization into core of complex shaped polymer materials" "Christophe Detavernier" "Department of Solid State Sciences" "The project consists in two parts. On one hand Europlasma will convert its low pressure reactor to a (PE)ALDreactor and on the other hand Alz03 and ZnO processes will be optimized for deposition of hydrophobic orantimicrobial coatings in open cell polymer structures, such as non-wovens and foams. The originality of theproject consists in the PEALD process optimization and understanding on these specific complex polymersubstrates, as on this aspect literature is scarce and limited to lab results. Other aspects are already known:commercial PEALD reactors are available, also for non-semiconductor applications; A}i03 and ZnO areamongst the easiest ALD processes and thus well documented in literature, however typically on non-polymersubstrates and mainly for semiconductor applications. The proposed approach consists on lab scale researchon polymer substrates allowing selection of applications and if successful, transfer and upscaling.All experts confinn that the project choice to focus on 3D polymer structures for non-sernicon applications isrelevant and, if successful, might lead to relevant niche market applications." "Alternative Channel Materials for 3-D NAND Memories" "Kristin De Meyer" "Assiocated Division ESAT-INSYS (INSYS), Integrated Systems, Semiconductor Physics" "Nowadays consumer’ s electronic such as smart phones, tablet, laptops, GPS navigators, health care devices, music players and digital photo/video cameras, is an inextricable part of the modern society and represents one of the fastest growing markets on the earth; the steadily increasing demand for portable devices requiring data storage in huge volume, has triggered an exceptional growth of non-volatile memory market. Non-volatile memories can retain the stored information even when not powered, and there are various solutions available in the market to serve the need of different applications: hard drives, magnetic tapes, compact disks, NAND and NOR flash memories, etc. . Among them, the most popular for mass data storage application are hard drives and NAND flash. Hard drive disks (HDDs) use spinning magnetic platters paired with magnetic head to read and write data. On the other hand NAND flash is a semiconductor memory entirely implemented in solid state circuits, and it does not require moving parts. Even if the cost per bit is relatively higher than HDDs, NAND flash has becoming a new driving force in the semiconductor industry over the last decade, thanks to its proven scalability, low power consumption and robustness, fundamental for portable systems.      In order to overcome the scaling obstacle in conventional planar NAND Flash, 3D NAND memory technology, has been introduced for mass production for the first time in 2014. The third dimension is exploited by stacking NAND cells on top of each other’s, resulting not only in a significant bit‑density increase but also in a reduced cost-per-bit. The most industrial relevant channel material for 3D NANDs is polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si). However, the conduction in poly‑Si channel is dominated by the grain size distribution and hampered by scattering events at grain boundaries and charged defects. As a consequence, the drive current (ID) required for reading operations, is low, unstable, and decreases as the number of stacked cells increases, rendering poly‑Si unsustainable for long‑term scaling. This thesis is an effort to investigate alternative channel materials with higher electron mobility than poly-Si, as a possible solution to enable further scaling for future 3D NAND generations." "NANO Phase II" "Ken HAENEN, Hans-Gerd BOYEN" "Materials Chemistry, Materials Physics" "This Methusalem project NANO wants to investigate the properties of nano materials en to predict them. Within NANO there is a continuous interaction between theoretical research and experiments. The Methusalem financing can broaden the boundaries of this research. The aim is to catch clusters of atoms in 2D images. Next to that, NANO wants to study the interaction between nano materials and the human body." "Nano removes limits in the research to nanostructures." "Hans-Gerd BOYEN, Patrick WAGNER" "Materials Physics" "This Methusalem project NANO wants to investigate the properties of nano materials en to predict them. Within NANO there is a continuous interaction between theoretical research and experiments. The Methusalem financing can broaden the boundaries of this research. The aim is to catch clusters of atoms in 2D images. Next to that, NANO wants to study the interaction between nano materials and the human body." "Micro and nano CT for hierarchical analysis of matter." "Martine Wevers" "Hydraulics and Geotechnics, Mechatronics, Biostatistics and Sensors (MeBioS), Department of Materials Engineering, BioMechanics (BMe), Structural Composites and Alloys, Integrity and Nondestructive Testing (SCALINT), Geology, Building Physics and Sustainable Design" "Scientists and engineers go beyond the borders using high resolution computed tomography (μ-CT, submicron en nano-CT) to reveal the internal structure and architecture of materials and relate it to the material performance and modelling." "Design of Complex PISA Nano Objects via (PET)-RAFT DispersedSystems in Continuous Micro Flow Reactors." "Tanja JUNKERS" "Organic and Bio-polymer Chemistry" "Today, polymer materials are designed with almost unlimited variations in chain length, topology, composition and functionality. However, all these reactions are targeted in small batch reactors, thereby facing difficulties with regard to proper mixing and controlling exothermic reactions upon up-scaling. In this project, the aim is to synthesize stimuli responsive nano-objects leading to the controlled synthesis of well-defined polymeric nano-objects with respect to morphology and endgroup fidelity, via polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) dispersed systems in continuous micro-reactors. Initially, one specific system will be targeted for the implementation of PISA via reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT). Both thermal as well as light mediated (photo-induced electron transfer (PET-RAFT)) mechanisms will be examined in detail. Once control over the morphology and end-group fidelity has been realized, the focus will be shifted towards the use of stimuli-responsive monomers, after which encapsulation of biological species will be exploited. In a last step, the complete reaction from polymer to polymeric nano-objects will be performed as a one step process by coupling multiple flow reactors, after which up-scaling from gram to kilogram scale will take place. As such, this project has the potential to considerably facilitate an easy, fast and efficient way to design and up-scale complex polymer objects in the future for use in biomedical applications." "Fabrication and characterization of reference nano and micro structures for 3D chemical analysis" "Luca Boarino, Wilfried Vandervorst" "Nuclear and Radiation Physics" "Industry is progressively moving towards complex 3D architectures and using advanced materials and heterogeneous systems, which includes both organic and inorganic materials.  Obviously, the performance of such complex 3D systems is also determined by the 3D elemental distributions, e.g. dopants distributions, or chemical compositions at the nanometric scale. Thus, 3D metrology should provide an accurate elemental and chemical measurement solution with a 3D spatial resolution (both lateral and depth) down to the nanometric scale in accordance with the needs of the industry (e.g. down to sub nanometer scale for the semiconductor industry).  In this context, time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToFSIMS), grazing incidence X-ray fluorescence (GIXRF) and atom probe tomography (APT) are among the potential enablers to resolve such a 3D spatial resolution. Despite the recent improvements to push ToFSIMS and GIXRF as the reliable 3D measurement techniques, the metrological assessment of such analyses has not been yet well evaluated. This is mainly due to the absence of 3D reference materials and the calibration standards. On the other hand, APT is an inherent three-dimensional technique, which enables elemental identification and quantification at a near-atomic resolution. However, similar to the other aforementioned techniques, the metrological assessment of APT analysis is also hampered due to the absence of the suitable reference materials. In this project, we have developed several well-characterized organic-inorganic 3D microstructures as the potential reference material (RM) for 3D ToFSIMS. To prepare the 3D nanostructures with the characteristic dimensions below 20 nm as a test vehicle for GIXRF analysis, we exploited the self-assembly of di-block copolymers (DBCs) as the lithography mask.  We have also studied in detail the pattern transfer at sub 20 scale into the Si substrate.In order to develop a potential reference material for APT, we have studied in detail the different aspects of the APT analysis, including ion trajectories, field-of-view (FOV) and the calibration of the different reconstruction parameters. We have studied in detail the FOV for both hemispherical and UV laser-induced asymmetric tip shape. In addition, we suggested a new design for an APT specimen, which maximizes the FOV and allows to probe the entire specimen volume in APT (full tip imaging). We have proven the feasibility of full tip imaging both numerically (finite element analysis) and experimentally. To do so, a specimen preparation process was developed based on standard lithography and etching techniques which allows to prepare multiple APT specimens in a repeatable fashion and with a minimized tip to tip variations in view of the tip radius and the shank angle. The developed full tip imaging feature can pave the way for the uncertainty assessment for all the reconstruction parameters and potentially enables a more reliable 3D data reconstruction in APT with the quantifiable uncertainties. In the absence of the certified reference material for APT, we have developed a well-characterized (i.e. traceable) B doped SiGe reference system (i.e. piece of wafer). Relying on this reference, the accuracy and the repeatability of APT analysis in view of Ge and B quantification over the specimen volume has been evaluated using UV and green lasers as well as in the different experimental conditions (electric field). In addition, the feasibility of APT analysis of an organic-inorganic system based on a polyaniline (Pani) - porous silicon (PSi) nanocomposite was evaluated in detail. We demonstrated that such a complex system could be analyzed by APT, whereby the 3D compositional distribution (lateral and depth distribution) was identified according to the distribution of monoatomic ions. The remained challenges for such an analysis were addressed and a potential solution was proposed."