Eco-sustainable designing of thin films, nanostructures, nanohybrids and hydrogels for high-added value materials

The focus of this proposal is on advanced eco-friendly technologies to design thin films, nanohybrids and nanomaterials. The objective is to provide an exchange platform for scientists, engineers and students dealing with the synthesis, characterization, and application of these materials. Experimental and theoretical approaches are included.

Scope:

To expand the understanding and integration of health, environment, and energy technologies, low-cost and high-performing materials are still required. Among them, low-dimensional materials such as thin films, nanomaterials, or hybrids, with eventually engineered surfaces, hold high promise for achieving this goal. Scientists and engineers have a growing interest in designing thin films, nanomaterials and nanocomposites, supported by advanced and specific characterizations to understand and correlate their composition and architecture with the involved mechanisms in their final application. Nanomaterials are considered as one of the pillars of energy and environmental transition and they become increasingly complex. A proper control of their synthesis methodologies with the use of cutting-edge techniques of material characterization remain a powerful tool to control their peculiarities and to maximize the ratio “performance” over “raw material amount”. Most of these procedures involve physical vapor deposition techniques (PVD) and chemical deposition ones (i.e. sol-gel; nano/electrochemical; spray pyrolysis; plating; PE-CVD, ALD).

The objective of this symposium is to highlight the progress in fundamental and applied issues related to the development of thin films and nanomaterials and to bridge the gap between science and technology. The expected emulation will contribute to accelerate material design and development in many applications fields like electronics, spintronics, (bio)sensing, biomedicine, catalysis, energy harvesting, energy storage, environment, and drug industry. Among others, composite materials consisting of nanocrystalline particles embedded in inorganic and/or organic matrix, as well as nano-laminated structures such as MAX-phases or hydrogels treated with vacuum techniques (i.e. cold atmospheric plasma) are in the scope of this symposium.

Finally, we leverage to address the symposium toward eco-sustainable and eco-friendly synthesis of these materials, which comprises, bio/fabrication of analogous nanomaterials from plants or other biobased raw materials, like biodegradable polymeric and metal-based nanomaterials. Thus, the application of thin films and nanomaterials for bioremediation and biotransformation of soil, wastewater, oil spills, other toxic pollutants and energy transition will be the main focuses of this symposium.

Hot topics to be covered by the symposium:

• Novel surface modification and synthesis routes in electrochemistry, laser assisted depositions, plasma processing, ALD, CVD
• Dry and wet eco-friendly processes for advanced materials
• Controlled growth of inorganic or carbon-based thin films and nanomaterials
• Multifunctional coatings with advanced applications in tribology, opto(electronics), data storage, (bio)sensing, and energy-relevant fields
• Innovative  thin films and nanomaterials for medicine, agro-food, optoelectronics and energy
• Advanced micro- and nanofabrication and coating technologies, PVD, HiPIMS
• High entropy nitride (or carbide) thin films
• Emerging technologies for surfaces characterization