Dr. Eugeny Alexandrov, a senior researcher of SCTMS, came back from the research trip to the University of Milan (Italy). From April 2 to May 20, 2017, he worked at the Laboratory of Dr. Lucia Carlucci and jointly with Prof. Davide M. Proserpio conducted the workshop on ToposPro at one of the European research centers.Eugeny Alexandrov spent his time at the University of Milan fruitfully. He completed the next stage of multi-layer materials’ synthesis as well as introduced the colleagues from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne EPFL Valais Wallis (Switzerland) to the practical application of ToposPro software package.
Dr. Alexandrov continued the research work that was initiated in April – May, 2016 when he developed theoretical background for the experimental work and synthesized a series of matters and a half of them demonstrated targeted properties.
This time the scientists, using ToposPro, have selected about 180 matters for possible synthesis. From the selection, the isomers with a similar composition, topology and layer structure but with a different stacking layer method were determined. As a result, eighteen new materials were synthesized and exfoliation capability of interlacing layers were studied.
“Last year, with predictions obtained using of ToposPro and successful synthesis of nanolayers we succeeded to develop several hypotheses. Currently, based on synthesis of new compounds we can confirm or disprove these hypotheses. We selected several most promising compounds for further analysis by means of atomic force spectroscopy in Japan (The Laboratory of Atsushi Kondo). - Eugeny comments. – The next steps are verification of materials’ properties and preparation of grant application”.
Multilayer materials have a vast scope of application; in particular, they are used in microelectronics, sensors’ production, for catalysis in petroleum and chemical industry, for separation and filtration of fluids, as well as for precise drug delivery in medicine.