Our summer school on “Advances in Functional Materials” is organized for the first time, and it aims to bring together young scientists (Ph.D. and MSc students) with renowned specialists in materials engineering. Experts from academia, research units, and industry will deliver lectures, tutorials, and laboratory classes so that you can practice what you have learned. We divided the program into five main thematic topics:
1) Superconducting materials
Although superconductivity was discovered more than 100 years ago, the phenomenon remains one of the main topics of solid-state physics and chemistry. In this thematic module, Professor Tomasz Klimczuk and Wei Wei Xie from USA will present the most relevant parameters of the superconducting state and explain how to determine them. He will show you some of the classes of materials in which superconductivity is observed. Afterward, you will synthesize a known superconductive compound in our lab and confirm its superconducting properties.
2) Additive manufacturing
The rise of additive manufacturing marks a third industrial revolution that will permanently change modern engineering and culture. Gdańsk Tech scientists - Jacek Ryl, Mateusz Cieslik, Robert Tylingo, and Krzysztof Formela, and their guest - Wanli Gao from the Czech Republic, will show you the perspectives of using advanced materials with tailored properties and recent developments in 3D and 4D printing for environmental, medical, and other key applications. During laboratory classes, you will fabricate polymer composites for 3D printing and learn the advantages and challenges of various additive manufacturing technologies.
3) Photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic materials
Irradiation of the photoactive material with UV or visible light generates electron-hole pairs, thereby free radicals, driving redox reactions such as water splitting (H2 production), degradation of the pollutants, or CO2 photoconversion to valuable hydrocarbons. In this module, our professors -Justyna Łuczak, Izabela Wysocka, Konrad Trzciński and Mariusz Szkoda, together with Professor Michael Badawi from France, will focus on the selected semiconducting materials used in photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic processes. They will pay attention to the mechanism of photo-oxidation, the characteristics of photoactive materials, and strategies employed to design and develop photocatalysts active under visible light. Having this knowledge, you will evaluate selected semiconductors as photocatalysts in the degradation reaction of a model organic pollutant and as photoanodes in the water-splitting reaction.
4) Materials for electrolyzers and fuel cells
A fuel cell is an electrochemical cell that converts the chemical energy of a fuel (often hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (e.g., oxygen) into electricity through a pair of redox reactions. A similar device called an electrolyzer converts electricity into chemical energy using opposite reactions. In this thematic module, our professors - Piotr Jasiński, Jakub Karczewski, Beata Bochentyn, and Sebastian Molin, together with Professor Ming Chen (DTU, Denmark) will describe different fuel cells and electrolyzers. They will pay special attention to the constructions and working regimes of polymer electrolytes, alkaline and solid oxide cells, stacks, and different cell configurations.
5) Electrochemical sensors
Our specialists in this field, professors Robert Bogdanowicz and Jacek Ryl, accompanied by their guest - Professor Vítězslav Straňák from the Czech Republic, will show you the recent progress in the field of electrochemical sensors, particularly in the context of heterogeneous electrochemical behavior. The topics will revolve around various boron-doped nanocarbon and metal oxide materials - their electrochemical properties and applications in sensor development. We will give special attention to a boron-doped diamond - a material exhibiting substantial heterogeneities influenced by several factors, including multi-faceted crystallinity, inhomogeneous boron concentration, sp2/sp3-carbon ratio, surface terminations, and grain size distribution. We will show you that heterogeneities affect the electrochemical behavior of boron-doped diamond and their suitability for sensor applications.
6) Poster session
If you run the research on any of these or related topics, we encourage you to present your results during the poster session. It is not mandatory. You may participate in our event even if you do not wish to share your research with us or have not yet started such studies.