The Eva Olsson research division is involved in the design and tailoring of materials to enable new sustainable solutions for energy harvesting, energy storage, energy consumption, catalysis, quantum technology and the use of soft matter in applications such as coatings for controlled drug release and solar cells. The function of the materials depends on the atomic structure where individual atoms play a role and also their exact position. We are using high spatial resolution imaging, spectroscopy and in situ techniques to quantitatively study the material structure (including techniques with high spatial precision in determining the position of atoms (1 pm), high energy resolution to determine electronic structure and high spatial precision in situ for electrical, mechanical, optical and thermal manipulation) and correlate the structure to properties.
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RECENT NEWS & EVENTS
June 11th, 13:15, 2020: Cecilia Fager will be defending her dissertation, "Quantitative 3D Reconstruction of Porous Polymers using FIB-SEM Tomography - Correlating materials structures to properties of coatings for controlled drug release", In this work the focus is on the understanding of the correlation between the microstructure and materials properties of phase-separated polymer coatings. We acquired high spatial 3D resolution data on microporous ethyl cellulose and hydroxypropyl cellulose coatings using FIB-SEM tomography. We optimised the FIB-SEM parameters and established a generic protocol for porous and poorly conducting materials in order to overcome challenges such as redeposition, curtaining, shadowing effects, charging and sub-surface information due to the pores. In addition, a new self-learning segmentation algorithm was introduced to enable an automatic separation between pores and matrix. The quantification of the porous network was carried out by determining the pore size distribution, tortuosity and interconnectivity. As a final step, diffusion simulations were performed on the FIB-SEM data and correlated with experimentally measured permeability.
May 15th, 2020: We are proud to announce that Doctor Andrew Yankovich, recently received the prestigious Albert Crewe Award for 2020 from the Microscopy Society of America (MSA). The award recognizes distinguished contributions to the fields of microscopy and microanalysis in the physical sciences of a single early career scientist. Albert Crewe (1927 - 2009), a physics professor at the University of Chicago and director of Argonne National Laboratory, developed the high-resolution electron microscope that was able to capture the first images of individual atoms in motion. His discoveries helped establish and expand the field of modern scanning transmission electron microscopy, as well as its use for atomic-scale research. May 5th, 2020: Eva Olsson, Kasper Moth-Poulsen and Joanne Etheridge’ groups cooperate and work on the synthesis and optical properties of metal and metal-oxide nanoparticle heterodimers. These heterodimers are formed by an electrostatic colloidal assembly strategy, incorporating different sizes, shapes and metal or metal oxide compositions into heterodimers. Additionally, hybridized localized surface plasmon resonance of the heterodimers were investigated by using energy and angle-resolved cathodoluminescence (AR-CL) in a SEM. The paper “Constructing a Library of Metal and Metal-Oxide Nanoparticle Heterodimers through Colloidal Assembly” has been accepted by Nanoscale. You can read the article here. |