2017

The journal provides an interdisciplinary forum for publishing papers which advance the fields of (i) polymerization methods, (ii) theory, simulation, and modeling, (iii) understanding of new physical phenomena, (iv) advances in characterization techniques, and (v) harnessing of self-assembly and biological strategies for producing complex multifunctional structures.

MaP and serveral MaP members are featured in the latest ETH Globe Magazin 04/2017, focus section "Manufacturing Redefined".

Despite recent advances to control the spatial composition and dynamic functionalities of bacteria embedded in materials, bacterial localization into complex three-dimensional (3D) geometries remains a major challenge. Researchers at the Laboratory for Complex Materials have now introduced a new 3D printing platform that works using living matter.

Claire Donnelly, PhD student at the Mesoscopic Systems group, has been awarded the 2018 Richard L. Greene Dissertation Award in Experimental Condensed Matter or Materials Physics from the American Physical Society. The award recognises doctoral thesis research of exceptional quality and importance. This prize is for her dissertation on "Hard X-ray Tomgraphy of Three Dimensional Magnetic Structures".

Cargo transport of molecules within cells is essential for life. Developing synthetic strategies for cargo control in living or inanimate thermal systems could lead to powerful tools to manipulate chemical gradients at the microscale and thus drive processes out of equilibrium to realize work. Researchers from Complex Materials and Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health at ETHZ demonstrated a colloidal analog of the complex biological shuttles responsible for molecular trafficking in cells.

The ETH Zurich’s student association (VSETH) has selected Markus Niederberger, head of the Laboratory for Multifunctional Materials, as a recipient of the "Goldene Eule".

The Materials Research Society has chosen Prof. Nicola Spaldin, Head of the Materials Theory group, to receive the Mid-Career Researcher Award for "her new theoretical framework describing multiferroics and service to the materials community" .

Nicola Spaldin, Professor of Materials Theory, gives a Lise Meitner Lecture on Monday 13 November 2017 in the Vienna Physics Colloquium series.

Dense colloidal suspensions can propagate and absorb large mechanical stresses, including impacts and shocks. In this work, the group of Prof. Lucio Isa in collaboration with scientists in the US and France, generated extreme localized deformations in colloidal crystals by exciting a target particle via pulsed-laser ablation. Stress propagation fronts take place, where fast-moving particles (V approximately a few meters per second) are aligned along the symmetry axes of the lattice.

The selective photoreduction of CO₂ to methanol is an energy efficient way to transform a harmful greenhouse gas into a hydrocarbon of great industrial importance. Researcher at the Laboratory for Multifunctional Materials demonstrate that translucent nanoparticle-based aerogel monoliths are promising photocatalysts for such gas phase reactions. Due to the high mechanical fragility of the aerogels, a special flow reactor was developed.

A novel functional material based on magnetically coupled nanomagnets known as artificial spin ice has been created by researchers from Mesoscopic Systems (Prof. Laura Heyderman), the University of Glasgow and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI). The collective behaviour of the system gives rise to a thermal ratchet, in which the average magnetisation rotates in a single direction – a chiral ice with potential applications in nanoscale devices such as nanomotors, actuators, sensors and data storage.

Prof. Tian has pioneered new chemical reactivity in inorganic nanowires to gain control of their morphology and make them biocompatible. This work has enabled new bioelectric measurements within cells.

The work by Dr. Edmondo M. Benetti on highly-confined controlled radical polymerizations, presented at the Controlled Radical Polymerization Session of the 254th American Chemical Society National Meeting (20-25th September 2017, Washington DC) was identified as the "Best Presentation" of the symposium.

Christian Mathis, former PhD student at Surface Science and Technology, was awarded the "KlarText – Prize for Science Communication". The price awards young scientists who have written a very good doctoral thesis and have summirized their results in an article that is generally comprehensible, logically structured and exiting.

We are delighted that Dr. Chiara Gattinoni, post-doctoral researcher at the Materials Therory group, is amongst the winners of the EPSRC Best Use of ARCHER competition, which was run by EPCC on behalf of ARCHER. 

The challenge of creating foams and emulsions with well-controlled size distribution and properties is encountered in many structured materials, such as food formulations and consumer care products. These products, like ice cream for example, must remain stable over long shelf lifetimes while their microstructure dictates product performance and consumer satisfaction. In this paper, researchers from the Soft Materials group present a strategy to halt dissolution of particle-coated air bubbles.

A team of researchers from UK, Japan and Switzerland led by Andrei Gusev (Polymer Physics) explored the use of a two-phase analytical micromechanics model to predict the viscoelastic attributes of the phase-separated binary polymer blends with the complicated sub-micron morphology. The outcomes indicated a great opportunity for using the micromechanics models to analyze how the blend morphology affects the measured properties, using unaltered bulk attributes of the constituent phases.

Surface stress, also known as surface tension, is a fundamental material property of any interface. However, measurements of solid surface stress in traditional engineering materials, such as metals and oxides, have proven to be very challenging. In this study, researches from Soft and Living Materials and other gourps take advantage of the high compliance and large elastic deformability of a soft polymer gel to directly measure solid surface stress as a function of strain.

Surface stress, also known as surface tension, is a fundamental material property of any interface. However, measurements of solid surface stress in traditional engineering materials, such as metals and oxides, have proven to be very challenging. In this study, researches from the Soft and Living Materials group take advantage of the high compliance and large elastic deformability of a soft polymer gel to directly measure solid surface stress as a function of strain.

Dr. Peter Beltramo, currently a postdoc in the soft materials group, will start in January 2018 as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at University of Massachusetts. We wish him all the best in Amherst.