Seminar/Séminaire ICMN : Jeudi 12 Oct 2023 – 13h30 Bibliothèque de l’ICMN, CNRS, Orléans
Alvarez-Fernandez, Alberto
Gipuzkoa Fellow
Material Physics Center, Donostia – San Sebastián (Gipuzkoa) – Spain
Title: Block copolymer directed nanoarchitectures for optoelectronic devices and biosensing
Summary:
The phase separation of block copolymers occurs typically on the length scale of 5 to 50 nm. Fine-tuning of structure formation and translation into inorganic thin film architectures allows access to material arrangements that are not feasible by conventional nanofabrication techniques. During my talk, I will illustrate how control over structural parameters, such as morphology, pore dimensions, porosity, or film thickness, enables the building of controlled nanoarchitectures with important applications in biosensing (QCM, SERS), humidity sensing, or optical metamaterials. Of particular importance in that objective is also the development of novel characterization techniques that could allow precise description and evaluation of the key structural parameters of the thin films created (e.g., surface area, pore size distribution, accessible porosity, surface morphology, among others). In this sense, in this talk, I will also introduce recent innovations made in our group focused on Ellipsometric Porosimetry and X-ray scattering characterization techniques.
Figure 1. Examples of nanostructures obtained via (A) block copolymer self-assembly and (B) co-assembly. (C) Example of application of the nanostructures in the improvement of sensitivity of Quartz Crystal Microbalance towards extracellular vesicles (EVs).
Bibliography: Dr. Alberto Alvarez-Fernandez is a Gipuzkoa Fellow at the Material Physics Center (Donostia/San Sebastian – Spain). Prior to his appointment, he was an ADMIRE MSCA fellow at Trinity College Dublin (2022-2023) and a Senior Research Fellow at University College London (2018-2022). He obtained a PhD in 2018 from the University of Bordeaux for his work on “Hybridization of block copolymer thin films with plasmonic nanoresonators for optical metamaterials design.” For his work, Alberto Alvarez-Fernandez has been awarded the RSC Materials Chemistry Horizon Prize: Stephanie L Kwolek Prize (2023) and EMRS Young Scientist Award (2021).
