Members of our department participated in large numbers in the 11^th International Workshop on Functional Nanocomposites held in Plön, Germany. Besides other oral and poster presentations given by our department members, Dr. J. Kousal delivered an invited talk entitled "Exploration of the gap between classical and plasma polymers: fundamental and applied science opportunities".

When large numbers of active Brownian particles swim towards the same place, they get stuck and form a colloidal crystal. However, what happens if these particles see their target with a time delay? Our paper published in EPL shows that in such a case, the crystal with increasing delay undergoes several unexpected and fascinating dynamical phases, which you can see here.

We heartily congratulate our students on the successful defense of their bachelor's, master's and dissertation theses.

We wish them success not only in the field of science but also in daily life!

Is it possible to controllably change the shape of niobium nanoparticles produced using a gas aggregation source? We tried to answer this question experimentally and theoretically in the article A multi-timescale model predicts the spherical-to-cubic morphology crossover of magnetron-sputtered niobium nanoparticles, which was just published in the journal Applied Surface Science. 

Our article Challenges in the deposition of plasma polymer nanoparticles using gas aggregation source: Rebounding upon impact and how to land them on a substrate has just been accepted for publication in the journal Plasma Processes and Polymers, in which we demonstrate that during the deposition of nanoparticles (especially plasma polymer ones), reflection of these nanoparticles may occur. We show under what conditions this phenomenon takes place, how to avoid reflection if needed and how to ensure that the nanoparticles adhere to the substrate. These results pave the way for broader utilization of plasma polymer nanoparticles.

Jan Prokeš participated in the development of a new method for determining the electrical conductivity of powders under defined pressure which is suitable for characterizing materials that cannot be compressed into standard tablets. In cooperation with other Czech research institutes, this method was used to study carbonized leather waste. This research, on the basis of which a series of articles has been published (#1, #2, #3, #4), opens up the possibility of processing leather waste into useful conductive materials with high application potential, for example as material in the electrodes of supercapacitors used for energy storage.

Our Ph.D. student Kateryna Biliak won the Best Poster Award for her contribution at the Cluster Meeting held on June 18-23, 2023 in Prague.

Hearty congratulations to Kataryna!!

The group of Prof. Shukurov participated in the prestigious conference of EMRS Spring Meeting 2023 in Strasbourg. Despite the large number of participants (> 2500), all team members received oral talks in recognition of the high quality of the research abstracts submitted. Our warmest congratulations go to Kateryna Biliak, who won a Young Researcher Award and Maria Protsak, who won a Best Presentation Award.

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A PhD position is available in the area of nonequilibrium statistical and condensed matter physics with a focus on particle transport in strongly crowded periodic environments.

Details, requirements and contacts can be found here.

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Following the success of the publication in Communication Physics, Marco Tosca has won a grant from the Grant Agency of Charles University on the related topic of ‘Plasma-assisted synthesis of boron/hydrocarbon polymer nanomaterials as targets for laser-driven proton-boron fusion’. He will investigate such nanomaterials for their interaction with high-power lasers, with the main objective of finding correlations between the material structure, composition, order vs. disorder, and alpha-particle yield. The project will contribute to the field of clean energy generation and may also prove feasible in other fields of science, including alpha particle-based cancer therapy and nondestructive material diagnostics.

In the journal Materials Chemistry and Physics, we have just published an article summarizing the results of the study of heat-induced morphogenesis of vanadium nanoparticle films prepared using the gas aggregation source of nanoparticles. These results pave the way for the preparation of highly porous coatings of vanadium and its oxides with well-controlled physical properties.

What is the history, present and future of plasma-based gas aggregation sources of nanoparticles? What prevents their further development and wider application? These are the topics we tried to answer in the review article "Plasma-assisted gas-phase aggregation of clusters for functional nanomaterials", which was published in the Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A.