Seminars

Illumination of a slurry of (micrometer sized) semiconductor particles in an aqueous phase solution of a metal salt, often results in deposition of well-defined metal(oxide) nanoparticles on the surface of the semiconductor particles: this phenomenon is generally known as photodeposition.

Strong presentation skills are a key to success for engineers, scientists, and others, yetmany speakers are at a loss to tackle the task. Systematic as they otherwise can be in their work, they go at it intuitively or haphazardly, with much good will but seldom good results.

(note the slightly later time of this seminar) An electron in a solid has three attributes: charge, spin, and orbital. The orbital represents the shape of the electron cloud in a solid. In magnetic metal oxides with anisotropic-shaped d-orbitals not only the Coulomb interactions are of importance, but also the quantum exchange energy is crucial for understanding their properties.

The light-driven water splitting reaction to generate molecular hydrogen and oxygen is one of the most promising processes for producing clean fuels. In the approach we are following we attempt to construct a photoelectrochemical (PEC) cell based on molecular components.

Many layered materials can be mechanically exfoliated to atomically thin sheets, the most famous being graphene. This opens the possibility to stack different layer types together to form materials with novel properties: van der Waals (vdW) systems. The extent to which vdW systemsdiffer from the mother materials is governed by the interaction between the different layers.