Open RQC colloquium. Lecture 43

Abstract

Colloids are particles of a few nanometres to about a micron is size that are dispersed in a liquid medium. They able to self-assemble into various structures yielding new materials with unprecedented properties. For example, the band gap of small semiconductor “quantum dots” can be tuned by varying their size and, therefore, the degree of quantum confinement of the electrons and holes. By letting the particles self-assemble into 2D nanostructures, materials with massless Dirac electrons can be made. This material is similar to graphene but is made out of nanocrystals instead of carbon atoms. Colloidal assemblies can also be used to make photonic materials, also known as “semiconductors for light”. In this lecture I shall guide you through the “nano-kitchen”, where our students “bake” advanced nanomaterials with unprecedented properties. The cooking process is followed by a number of in-situ and real-time experimental techniques many of which rely on the use of synchrotron x-rays.

Biography

Andrei Petukhov was born in Naryan-Mar (Russian Federation) in 1961. He studied physics at the Lomonosov Moscow State University. His MSc (1985) and PhD (1988) degree were obtained at the quantum radiophysics group with non-linear optics studies of the metal-electrolyte interface. After a Humboldt fellowship in Forschungszentrum Jülich (1993-1996) and an EU fellowship/postdoc in Nijmegen (1996-2000), Andrei Petukhov crossed the border between chemical physics and physical chemistry and joined Chemistry Department of Utrecht University in 2000. Here he changed his research field and started studying self-assembly of colloidal particles of different shapes and sizes ranging from several nanometres to about a micron. Much of his research takes place at large-scale facilities such as the European Synchrotron ESRF in Grenoble, France. In addition, Andrei Petukhov holds a part-time position at the Eindhoven University of Technology, is an editor-in-chief of the Advanced Nanomaterials section in Materials, a chairman of the International Advisory Council of the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University in Kaliningrad and a chairman of the C08 beamtime allocation panel of the ESRF. 

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