Unlocking Complexity: Emergent Behaviors in Soft Robotics Through Simple Interaction Rules
Bottom-up strategies have been proposed to create active superstructures capable of executing rudimentary tasks. For instance, swarm robotics utilizes many simple robots with minimal functionalities (such as self-locomotion or basic configurational changes), which, through mutual yet elementary interactions, lead to a global organization with capabilities surpassing those of individual particles. However, these superstructures often suffer … Read more
Uncovering the mechanics of a living viscoelastic ball of worms
Active polymers and filaments play a fundamental role in life, serving as essential building blocks across various length scales. Fir instance, they dictate the mechanical and structural properties of cells and can assemble into complex structures with surprising properties. Despite their significance, understanding the collective emergent properties of such structures (such as their mechanical response … Read more
Active Emulsions
We aim at creating a new class of active materials with unique on demand properties. This dream could be achieved by render a simple emulsion, a.k.a. yield stress fluids, active thanks to the addition of active agents. We will use light-responsive microalgae as active units to tame the rheology of the emulsion. The project involves … Read more
Unravelling protein gelation for plant-based food design
Protein aggregation is central to biomedical sciences and food preparation; yet, understanding and predicting it remains a grand challenge due to the complexity of protein interactions. In particular, plant proteins offer a sustainable and healthy alternative for their animal counterpart to make plant-based food, but design requires understanding and predicting plant-protein gelation & breakup. We … Read more
Sandwiching salts
At the Advanced Research Center for Nanolithography (ARCNL) we carry out exciting fundamental physics research at the highest possible level with relevance to key technologies in nanolithography. We contribute to the production of ever smarter and smaller electronics, while at the same time pushing the boundaries of our fundamental insight into the workings of nature. … Read more
Topology and correlated Mott state on the Kagome lattice of Nb3Cl8
A new class of layered materials was recently proposed to harbor a special electronic structure where topology and correlation effects mix. Very recent theoretical work shows that this special material may harbor a correlated Mott state [1]. The race is on to further investigate its properties and to test whether these materials can be changed … Read more
BSc/MSc project – Pressure-dependent optical measurements to probe bandgap shifts in 2D perovskites (joint with AMOLF)
Layered 2D hybrid perovskites are composed of organic spacer layers connecting adjacent perovskite slabs made of octahedra, where a monovalent MI (1+) and a trivalent MIII (3+) cation coordinate six halides and are ordered in an alternating fashion. These materials have attracted considerable interest due to their unique optoelectronic properties and highly modular structure that can be … Read more
BSc/MSc project – Strain-Dependent Photoluminescence in Layered Double Perovskites
Layered 2D hybrid perovskites are composed of organic spacer layers connecting adjacent perovskite slabs made of octahedra, where a monovalent MI (1+) and a trivalent MIII (3+) cation coordinate six halides and are ordered in an alternating fashion. These materials have attracted considerable interest due to their unique optoelectronic properties and highly modular structure that can be … Read more
BSc project – Predicting Metal Ions to Form Novel Double Perovskites
The photovoltaic performance of halide double perovskites (see picture) has been limited due to the large and/or indirect bandgap of the presently known materials. However, their applications extend beyond outdoor photovoltaics, as halide double perovskites exhibit properties suitable for memory devices, indoor photovoltaics, X-ray detectors, light-emitting diodes, temperature and humidity sensors, photocatalysts, and many more. … Read more
Attosecond X-rays eyes: High-harmonic generation and EUV science
The High-Harmonic Generation and EUV Science group at ARCNL investigates attosecond X-rays by high-harmonic generation (HHG) in gases and solids to: – Understand and enhance HHG efficiency. – Develop ultrafast nanoscale metrology tools. We have several internships for M.Sc. and B.Sc. projects available. Interested? Contact group leader Peter Kraus (kraus@arcnl.nl). Website URL: https://arcnl.nl/research-groups/high-harmonic-generation-and-euv-science/ Email … Read more
Classical Analogues to Altermagnets
Altermagnetism has recently emerged as a generalized form of magnetism beyond the classical ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. Altermagnets have an additional broken symmetry in comparison to (anti)ferromagnets that give them strange properties. For example, they share some of the properties of the ferromagnets (e.g. the quantum spin-hall effect) yet without a net magnetization. In addition, they … Read more
Noise in non-Reciprocal Patterns
In a non-reciprocal interaction, an agent A reacts to an agent B differently to the way agent B reacts to agent A. Non-reciprocal interactions are commonplace in society and complex living systems but have long been overlooked by most physicists because they can only exist in a system out of equilibrium. By introducing non-reciprocal interactions … Read more
PhD Position in Fracture Metamaterials
Are you enthusiastic about exploring the fascinating interplay between physics and mechanics? Are you interested in real world applications of metamaterials? We are delighted to open a PhD position on the field of fracture metamaterials: the goal is to steer fracture using the internal architecture of metamaterials. What are you going to do? … Read more
Spectrally cleaning a laser beam, enabling quditsand RbSrmolecule creation
Website URL: http://www.strontiumBEC.com Email Address: d.digvijay@uva.nlf.schreckuva.nl
Superlubric particles for friction and wear reduction
Supervisors: Abhishek Gupta and Peter Schall Friction between moving parts and the associated wear are responsible for about 25% of the world’s energy consumption. Superlubricity is a new mechanism of ultralow friction between solid surfaces, achieved with 2D materials such as graphene when sliding along incommensurate lattice directions (see image below). In this project, we … Read more
PhD position in quantum enhanced sensing with entangled Ba+ ions
Are you interested in developing quantum technology for sensing and metrology applications and are you highly motivated? Apply to join the QUantum Enhanced Sensing with Trapped-IONs (QUESTIONs) project! In this project you will develop a scalable trapped-ion quantum sensor based on Ba+ for quantum enhanced sensing and metrology. You will built-up lasers that enable cooling … Read more
Photothermal catalysis using pulsed light
Catalysts are the workhorses of industrial chemistry, accounting for 85% of chemical products, such as artificial fertilizer and precursors for plastics. Temperature is a key control parameter in any catalytic reaction and reactors are typically heated using fossil-fuel derived heat. It would be more energy efficient and sustainable to only apply heat where the chemistry … Read more
Using AI-algorithms for optimizing the optical response of plasmonic nanophotonics
Plasmonic nano-antennas can confine and manipulate light at the nanoscale, which can be applied in a wide variety of applications such as molecular sensing, biomedical imaging, and light-driven catalysis. The use of simulation software can help to model the nanostructures before we fabricate them, but it can be time-consuming and complex to find the optimal … Read more
Physics of Frost Heaving
When a soil is subject to low temperatures, the freezing of water can lead to an upward forces and the deformation of the soil with the growth of ice. This phenomena, called frost heaving can lead to catastrophic destruction of roads or buildings in cold regions as shown in figure above. The most obvious explanation … Read more
Detector Research and Development for LHC experiments and beyond
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva seeks to answer fundamental questions about elementary particles and our universe. Protons or heavy ions are collided at nearly the speed of light to study the tiniest building blocks of nature. To increase the amount of data taken by the LHC experiments in the future, many … Read more
A trapped-ion quantum sensor for the search for new physics
The Standard Model of physics is still far from complete. In the quest of understanding the unknown nature of dark matter and dark energy, precision measurements in single trapped ions are becoming highly sensitive probes. These ions can be controlled extremely precise by cooling them to their quantum mechanical ground state, such that the ion is almost … Read more
3D Printing on Earth and in Space
3D printing has proven to be a game-changer in space exploration and has revolutionized the way astronauts and space agencies approach problems in space. With 3D printing, it is possible to produce complex components and parts on demand, reducing the need for large inventories and saving space and weight on spacecraft. It also enables the … Read more
Robotic swarms as a model for dense active matter
Can we use robots to study biological materials like tissues? We think we can! We are developing experimental and computational platforms to study the dense population of moving cells using robots. To this end, we program the robots about the size of a 2-Euro coin to move like cells. We then explore how robots move … Read more
Active Dynamics in Plants – the Physics of Chloroplast Motion
When plant face different light conditions they have to adapt, sometimes the light is too strong and they get a “sun burn” which destroys the biochemical machinery for photosynthesis. If the light is too weak they “starve” because photosynthesis does not work well. Plants seem like very calm organisms, but if you zoom into their … Read more
3D-PRINTED ACTIVE MATTER
Active Matter refers to a class of physical systems made up of self-propelled, interacting entities, such as living organisms or synthetic particles, that exhibit collective behavior and can produce forces and fluxes at the macroscopic scale. Active matter systems can generate directed motion, spontaneous pattern formation, and display emergent properties that are not present in … Read more
Designing New Materials with Computations
Many industries and technological developments benefit by designing new materials to optimized performances and save energy. For instance, cosmetic or food industries significantly benefit from materials that have engineered mechanical properties. Designing material in the lab is however expensive and require many steps. Here we aim to use computational fluid dynamics to explore emergent behaviour … Read more
A memory of heat
We are witnessing a truly remarkable moment: the birth of an artificial intelligence. Large language models, machine learning and deep fakes are all running on distributed computing networks that use a tremendous amount of energy. For example, the training of chat-GPT used up approximately 1 GWh of energy. The projections are that at the current … Read more
The surprising effect of nothing
In 2015, a team in Strasbourg made an amazing (and controversial) claim: The electrical conductivity of a material can be dramatically enhanced by embedding it in a tailored photonic environment. Remarkably, light was not involved. The enhancement was due to the coupling of electron-hole pairs to the vacuum field, i.e., to nothing. The team recently … Read more
Measuring transient violations of the 2nd law
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Quantifying excitonic light scattering in 2D nanophotonic metasurfaces
Supervisors: Thomas Bauer and Jorik van de Groep Monolayer 2D semiconductors exhibit uniquely strong light-matter interactions in the visible spectral range due to quantum mechanical exciton resonances. When patterned on the nanoscale, light can be confined into these atomically thin layers of material and pick up a scattering phase and amplitude that is dictated by … Read more
Excitonic light-matter interactions in heterostructure 2D solar cells (joint project)
Supervisors: Tom Hoekstra, Peter Schall, and Jorik van de Groep Since the isolation of graphene in 2004, more than two thousand layered 2D materials have been identified. These materials can be exfoliated from bulk down to atomically thin monolayers, which exhibit unique optical and electronic properties, including stable excitons at room temperature. By employing a … Read more
Solarfoil: Nanocrystal spectral converters for green economy
Supervisors: Jasmin Fisher, Ina Flaucher and Peter Schall The solar spectrum contains many frequencies of light, yet photosynthetic organisms only absorb some of them. To match the spectra, we develop highly efficient light-converting nanomaterials and integrate them into foils to “shape” sunlight into an optimum spectrum for the photosynthetic species at hand. The light tuning … Read more
AI-assisted nanophotonic inverse design of optical sensors
Nanomaterials have optical properties that strongly depend on their geometry and are therefore are often used as tunable signal transducers in optical sensors. For example, palladium nanoparticles are capable of detecting H2 gas by absorbing hydrogen within its metallic lattice, leading to a modified electronic structure and optical appearance. Recently, we have shown that periodic … Read more