CARES Visiting Scientist Seminar: Scalable gas-phase synthesis of functional nanoparticles based on a detailed understanding of precursor chemistry and particle growth

CARES C4T is delighted to announce the first seminar under the CARES C4T Visiting Scientists Programme, given by Prof. Dr. Christof Schulz of the Institute for Combustion and Gas Dynamics – Reactive Fluids (IVG), and CENIDE, Center for Nanointegration Duisburg-Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen.

The Visiting Scientists Programme brings excellent scientists from around the world to Singapore for a short period to work with the C4T researchers on topics relevant to the goal of the programme. During their stay, the visiting scientists are invited to give a public seminar to enable the broader scientific community in Singapore to also interact with their work.

Scalable gas-phase synthesis of functional nanoparticles based on a detailed understanding of precursor chemistry and particle growth

Register via http://whoozin.com/KAP-HAC-UK49 (registration is open to all)

Abstract: Gas-phase synthesis of nanoparticles allows to generate high purity materials with well-controlled properties in continuous flow situations that provide a chance for scale-up to industrial scale. Nanoparticles with well-controlled composition and narrow size distributions are of interest for a wide variety of applications from coatings to electronics to functional materials, e.g., for energy conversion and storage. For the synthesis of materials with desired properties, however, the reaction conditions must be well controlled and the underlying processes understood. The decomposition kinetics of vaporized metal organic compounds, the ignition properties of the mixture of these materials with oxidizing environments as well as the reaction mechanisms of the decomposition, cluster formation and the potential interaction with flame chemistry is a prerequisite for a targeted synthesis of materials. Kinetics experiments are carried out in shock tube reactors with optical and mass spectrometric detection of intermediate and product species, and in flow reactors with laser-based detection of temperature and species concentration. At the same time, reaction conditions such as temperature, intermediate species concentration and particle size must be determined in situ in lab-scale nanoparticle reactors as well as in pilot-plant-scale reactors to provide input and validation data for numerical simulation. In this presentation these aspects will be introduced based chemical kinetics measurements in shock tubes and the investigation of particle formation and growth in flow reactors using molecular-beam sampling and laser based measurements of temperature and intermediate species concentrations. 

Biography: Prof. Dr. Christof Schulz holds the Chair for Combustion and Gas Dynamics at the University of Duisburg-Essen where he currently leads a group of 45 scientists. In 2014 he received the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation, DFG. In 1999 he received the Freudenberg Award of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and the 1. Prize of the BMW Scientific Award. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Progress in Energy and Combustion Science and member of the editorial boards of Applied Physics B, Combustion and Flame, and Proceedings of the Combustion Institute. From 2007–10 he was deputy director of the Center for NanoIntegration Duisburg-Essen (CENIDE) and later (2010-2015), its director. He is currently a scientific director of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Technology (IUTA) in Duisburg and the director of the NanoEnergyTechnologyCenter (NETZ). He is member of the board of the German Section of the Combustion Institute and of the board of the international Combustion Institute. Between 2008 and 2016 he served as an elected member of the review board “Energieverfahrenstechnik” of the German Research Foundation, DFG.