The focus of our research is size effects in materials, which means how materials properties change as a function of the external length scale. The aim is the identification of the size that optimizes a specific materials property, such as yield or fracture strength, toughness, and recently also electronic properties such as color, carrier mobility and band gap engineering.
Our traditional competences originate from mechanical properties and alloy development, but in the past couple of years we have extended our knowledge into functional properties and all materials classes.
Recently, we also have been targeting materials creation from the bottom-up with the aim of synthesizing complex 3D gradient structures on the micrometer and nanometer length scale that benefit from the identified optimal length scale.
Research areas
Optical Nanomaterials
Optical metamaterials enable the manipulation of electromagnetic waves in an unprecedented way. By controlling the electromagnetic properties, we design and develop optical nanomaterials that assemble themselves, that harbour perfect absorbing states, that enable exciting light-matter interactions.
We develop a novel additive manufacturing technique—called electrohydrodynamic redox 3D printing—that allows direct deposition of metal nanostructures. We expand the materials palette, geometrical complexity, resolution, and characterize the synthesized materials by advanced imaging techniques and micromechanics.
Printing of active materials (or 4D printing) introduces time as an additional parameter through materials that react to stimuli by changing their shape, properties or functionality. We explore this novel technique through shape memory alloys (SMA) which are metallic materials capable of recovering from strains past the elastic limit.
Reactive multilayers locally release a large amount of heat and can thus be used for the self-healing of metals or for joining applications. We investigate their properties in order to broaden their applicability as well as the fundamental understanding of the underlying mechanisms.
Micromechanics is an important tool to explore, understand, and harness the power of materials at the micro- and nano-scale. We focus this core competency towards characterizing and investigating the role of specific microstructures and materials features in mechanical deformation to better engineer materials for the future.
Pushing strain measurements beyond limits! We use digital image correlation of in-situ SEM experiments to study the elastic strain limits of crystalline silicon in the micro-scale. This method even allows to see the anisotropy in shear modulus. 👇 sciencedirect.com/scie...call_made
New Paper: Alloying 3D Nanostructures 📰🚨 By using mixed metal salt solutions, our EHD 3D printer proved capable of producing binary and ternary alloys.
Composition? Solely solution-dependent, offering exceptional versatility!
👇
doi.org/10.1016/j.matd...call_made
@ETH_Materialscall_made
@ETH_encall_made
