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Nanochemistry Research Group

NANOCHEMISTRY RESEARCH GROUP

Principal Investigator:

  • Muhammet S Toprak (Professor)

Group Members: 

  • Dr. Adem Ergül (Researcher)
  • Dr. Jose Serrano (PostDoc)
  • Assist. Prof. Idris Yazgan (Visiting Researcher)
  • Dr. Bejan Hamawandi (Visiting Researcher)
  • Ms. Maria Dolores Garrido Blay (Visiting PhD)

M.Sc. Students:

  • Metehan Kirsanli
  • Jakub Palacka

Research focus:

The focus of the research group is on designing and developing novel nanomaterials architectures with desired characteristics; developing energy and resource effective synthesis methods  as well as detailed microstructural, physicochemical, thermo-physical and transport characterisations. Nanomaterials can simply be defined as materials having size of less than 100 nm in one of their physical dimensions, while a change in their physical/chemical properties are observed accompanying the size reduction. Currently our work is focusing on design, fabrication and characterisation of nanomaterials for energy and medicine. These areas have different requirements with respect to the final materials' characteristics that can not be tackled with streamline fabrication process, where more chemistry knowledge/skills and imagination comes into the picture. That is when it gets very interesting :-)

               

Engineering nano materials, and interfaces, is a probably the best term to describe what we do. Materials requirements are getting increasingly complex for a variety of applications. Not only their fabrication but also their processing, stabilisation to be linked to surfaces or dispersed in proper base liquid requires a wide set of skills for their fabrication with desired composition and morphology, where the dispersion, or adhesion, characteristics are more defined by their surfaces. Surface modification schemes is an essential part of the progress in materials science. Of course detailed materials characterisation is a strong skill-set we posses in our research to be able to define the materials designed and fabricated for a special purpose. Some snippets from ongoing research are given below:

Thermoelectric (TE) materials can play a very important role in efficient energy harvesting, and recovery. TE devices are ‘fuel-free’ solid-state devices with no moving parts and therefore are extremely reliable. TEs can harvest residual low-grade energy which otherwise is wasted. My group is coordinating a big EU funded project on nanoengineered thermoelectric materials (NEXTEC), focusing on power generating in the intermediate temperature range. More environment friendly composition of TE materials based on Mn and Mg silicides are also investigated through financing from Energimyndigheten. Scalable thermoelectrics is another direction we are aiming at developing for low grade heat harvesting applications via financing from SSF, under my coordination, which is one of five strategic area projects selected in 2012. An interview on TE materials can be found  online. Currently we are developing hybrid materials based on the developed nanostruvtured thermoelectrics, which are among the hottest fields of research due to heavy interest in flexible and printable electronics (energy harvesting, sensors, power source, etc.)

In the field of energy efficiencywe focused on the design and fabrication of nanofluids for enhanced heat transfer (NANOHEX). VR recently financed a continuation of this VR-NANOHEX project for another three years, where we already have some important findings and applied for IPR protection to secure the know-how (Nanohex Brochure). Currently we are working on energy storage materials (PCMs) and boiling in nano-enhanced micro tubes together with our colleagues from the Energy Department of KTH. An interview about nano fluids is published at KTH very recently, which can be reached via this link.

Brief Overview of Materials architectures

Biomedically applicable nanoparticles are among the materials we have developed and tested for a variety of functions, mainly for imaging contrast agent and possibly for targeted drug delivery. Many platform materials based on super paramagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles and their surface modifications with silica, as an inert coating material to develop core-shell nanostructures, have been fabricated using combinatorial chemistry methods and tested for their toxicity on various primary cell lines. Heavy-metal free nano phosphors based on rare-earth oxides are currently under development that have the dual function of up- and down-conversion characteristics that will allow visualisation of targeted tissues by the help of fluorescence microscopy. In a KAW funded collaborative project we developed x-ray fluorescent nanoparticles for improved resolution of x-ray imaging. Various ceramic particles based on MoOx, and metallic nanoparticles based on Rh and Ru are prepared and evaluated for this purpose. The use of XRF and these nanoprobes allowed for iterative nanoparticle design for biomedical applicatons.

Recently we started collaborateive work with RISE on "Nanomaterials based sensors for forensics applications" where we develop carbon/graphene quantum dots (CQD/GQD) for the detection of narcotics. The GQD/CQD synthesis is made using solution chemistry and very energy effective microwave assisted heating process, dramatically reducing the reaction time for large scale synthesis of high-quality nanoparticles. 

 

Research projects:

  • Micowave-assistetd synthesis, Processing and 3D Printing of Thermoelectric Materials. Allocated Budget: 1 480 000 SEK (2023-2026; Olle Engkvist Stiftelse)

  • Solid-liquid thermoelectric systems with uncorrelated properties, UncorrelaTEd; FET-Project (EU-H2020; 2020-2024)Micowave-assistetd synthesis, Processing and 3D Printing of Thermoelectric Materials. Allocated Budget: 1 480 000 SEK (2023-2026; Olle Engkvist Stiftelse)

  • Porous surfaces for enhanced performance of heat pumps and refrigeration equipment, Energimyndigheten (2021-2024); Collaborative project with Prof. Björn Palm (UNIT OF APPLIED THERMODYNAMICS AND REFRIGERATION)

  • Grafenskum för återvinningsbara filter för CO2 och oljeavskiljning, Vinnova (2019); Collaborative project with RISE

  • Cost Action: CA18132 - Functional Glyconanomaterials for the Development of Diagnostics and Targeted Therapeutic Probes

  • Tuning elektronisk transport av material genom att verka utanför kristallgittret (VR; 2019-2021)

  • Large-scale Microwave Assisted Heating  Reactor for High Throughput ( Scale-up ) Synthesis of Nanomaterials (Stiftelsen Olle Engkvist Byggmästaren; 2018-2019)

  • Låg Dimensionella Termoelektriska Material för Utvinning av Energi från Spillvärme (Energimyndigheten; 2017-2020)

  • Molecular X-ray imaging (Knut and Alice Wallenbergs Foundation; 2017-2021)

  • Metal Assisted Chemical Etchng (MACE) of Silicon Zone Plate Structures (2016- )

  • Enhanced Nanofluid Heat Exchange (VR; 2014-2016): NANOHEX

  • A new generation of wireless sensors for integrated precise agriculture (EC-FP7; 2014-2016): AGRISENSACT 

  • Scalable Thermoelectrics (SSF; 2012-2016)

  • Next Generation Thermoelectric Converters - NEXTEC (EC-FP7; 2012-2014) 

Dissertations from the group:

M.Sc. Students (Supervisor / Examiner)

Profile picture of Muhammet Toprak