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AMOLF researchers unravel how nano-antennas enhance chemical reactions
The chemical industry consumes a lot of energy, not only to initiate reactions but also to separate products from by-products. In a promising emerging field of research, scientists worldwide are trying to use nanoscale antennas to capture and concentrate light into tiny volumes in order to initiate chemical reactions more efficiently and sustainably.
AMOLF group leader Kristina Ganzinger (Physics of Cellular Interactions) is one of the 78 researchers who received a NWO Vidi grant that is worth 800.000 euros. This grant allows Ganzinger to further expand her research on immune cell signaling using advanced microscopy and synthetic biology tools.
The ability of a cell to separate its own matter from its surroundings is a basic requirement for life. A team of researchers at AMOLF and Delft University of Technology have managed to create a synthetic container, or lipid vesicle, that is able to hold a range of different biological systems: from a cytoskeleton to entire E.coli bacteria. Their findings on this optimized cDICE method, which has the potential to reveal the inner workings of life, are published in ACS Synthetic Biology on June 29, 2021.
Former PhD students Anne Meeussen (Mechanical Metamaterials group) and Mario Avellaneda Sarrio (Biophysics group) are amongst the 31 researchers who have recently received a Rubicon grant from NWO. The Rubicon program gives young, highly promising researchers the opportunity to gain international research experience. With a Rubicon grant they can spend up to 24 months doing research at a foreign institution.
AMOLF and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems have started a strategic cooperation in the field of metamaterials for optical applications. In the project “Metasurfaces for Energy Efficient Devices” (MEEt), the partners are developing metamaterials for solar cells, LEDs and optical sensors and the processes for their production. The joint project will run for three years and is funded by the Fraunhofer International Cooperation and Networking (ICON) program.
Signals can be amplified by an optimum amount of noise, but this so-called stochastic resonance is a rather fragile phenomenon. Researchers at AMOLF were the first to investigate the role of memory for this phenomenon in an oil-filled optical microcavity. The effects of slow non-linearity (i.e. memory) on stochastic resonance were never considered before, but these experiments suggest that stochastic resonance becomes robust to variations in the signal frequency when systems have memory. This has implications in many fields of physics and energy technology. In particular, the scientists numerically show that introducing slow non-linearity in a mechanical oscillator harvesting energy from noise can increase its efficiency by tenfold. They publish their findings in Physical Review Letters on May 27th.
On October 1st Marc Serra will start as tenure track group leader at AMOLF. His Hyper Smart Matter group will be embedded in the Designer Matter research theme at AMOLF. Serra intends to design and build complex materials that manipulate sound waves to process information. These materials will enable a wide variety of new devices, from computers that consume very low power to soft robots that accomplish complex tasks autonomously. Serra aims to simultaneously solve practical problems and understand how physical principles such as the laws of thermodynamics fundamentally limit the energy efficiency of computers.
Researchers from AMOLF’s Soft Robotic Matter group have shown that a group of small autonomous, self-learning robots can adapt easily to changing circumstances. They connected these simple robots in a line, after which each individual robot taught itself to move forward as quickly as possible. The results were published today in the scientific journal PNAS.
The coupling of light and matter is relevant to many emerging technologies like lasers, LEDs, sensors, and more. To observe this coupling researchers use optical microscopes, and the signatures of light-matter coupling are then evidenced by measuring the transmission of different colors of light (i.e. the spectrum). Typically, the measured spectrum is assumed to be independent of the microscope’s properties. However, scientists at AMOLF have discovered that the microscope’s properties can profoundly impact those measurements. The results raise awareness about a hitherto ignored source of error in optical experiments, and pave the way for the correct characterization of optical systems. The researchers published this study in the journal ACS Photonics on May 4th.
In solar cells, about two third of the energy of sunlight is lost. Half of this loss is due to a process called ‘hot carrier cooling’ where high energy photons lose their excess energy in the form of heat before being converted to electricity. Scientists at AMOLF have found a way to manipulate the speed of this process in perovskites by applying pressure to the material. This paves the way for making perovskites more versatile, not only for use in solar cells but also in a variety of other applications, from lasers to thermoelectric devices. The researchers will publish their study in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters on 23 April.
Martin van Hecke (Mechanical Metamaterials group at AMOLF and Leiden University) receives a 2.5 million euro ERC Advanced Grant for research into information processing materials. The European Research Council uses the ERC Advanced grants to allow outstanding research leaders to pursue ground-breaking, high-risk projects in Europe.
AMOLF program leader Albert Polman receives an Advanced Research Grant of 2.5 million euros from the European Research Council (ERC). He will use the ERC Advanced Grant to develop a new type of quantum electron microscope. He will use intense laser pulses to tailor the energy spectrum of high-energy electrons in a scanning electron microscope. This provides a unique way to control the quantum-mechanical electron wave packet in space and time. By combining materials excitation using these wavepackets and the detection of light that is emitted (cathodoluminescence) this creates an entirely new way of analytical electron microscopy. The new instrument will play a key role in AMOLF’s nanophotonics and nanophotovoltaics research program.