Plenary sessions

E-MRS 5 Year Materials Impact Prize recipient

Multifunctional Hybrid Interfaces for Energy and
Medical Applications

Maurizio Prato
Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences
University of Trieste, Italy

CIC BiomaGUNE, San Sebastián, Spain

Nature adopts a formidable complexity of highly specialized components and structures to perform vital functions for us, our bodies, our well-being and our world. The biological construction of these components and their assembly is extremely complex and is susceptible to fatal errors, irreversible injury, aging to lethal degradation. To find alternatives to the fragility of biological structures, science has developed artificial systems able to implement and improve the natural systems. During this talk, we will describe our progress in two crucial fields: (1) the reconnection of nerves in spinal cord injuries, where carbon nanotubes can act as active substrates for nerve growth, and (2) the photo-electrocatalytic splitting of water for the production of "green hydrogen".

E-MRS 5 Year Materials Impact Prize recipient

Graphene Nanoribbons versus Graphene

Klaus Müllen
Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz

MRS Mid-Career Researcher Award

Thin Film Implants for Bioelectronic Medicine

George Malliaras
Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK

Bioelectronic medicine provides a new means of addressing disease via the electrical stimulation of tissues: Deep brain stimulation, for example, has shown exceptional promise in the treatment of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders, while stimulation of peripheral nerves is being explored to treat autoimmune disorders. The implanted electrodes used in these devices are assembled by hand, using top down techniques that herald from (mechanical) watchmaking! Using the (bottom up) microfabrication techniques of microelectronics promises to revolutionise implantable devices, enabling exceptionally precise stimulation and minimally invasive thin film form factors. I will overview the state-of-the-art in the use of thin film implants and discuss the challenges that lie ahead on the road to deploying this technology to patients at scale.

E-MRS EU-40 Materials Prize

Chemical Principles for Quantum Materials Discovery

Fabian O. von Rohr
University of Geneva, Department of Quantum Matter Physics,
Switzerland

The discovery of materials with tailored properties has, time and again, proven to be a crucial stimulus for technological advancement and, by implication, of societal progress. Quantum materials discovery, in particular, is widely considered to have a key role in the development of such next-generation technologies that will meet the urgent technological demands of our society. Our research aims at establishing a general experimental platform for realizing new quantum materials. In this presentation, I will discuss some of our recent results regarding the discovery and characterization of new quantum materials. This work is at the intersection of condensed-matter physics and materials synthesis, and as I will discuss here, a special emphasis on the combination of physical and chemical concepts is extremely important for developing these new quantum materials.

Expanding plasma technologies for sustainable world

Masaharu Shiratani
Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

Low temperature plasma realizes high temperature chemical reactions at low temperatures, because of its high electron temperature of 3 eV and low gas temperature. High energy electrons dissociate molecules into highly reactive radicals and ions impinging onto surface promote surface reactions even at low temperatures. Such advantages have been employed to semiconductor fabrications, surface protective and functional coatings, gas conversions, and so on. In recent years, low temperature plasma also opens emerging applications in medical, biological, and agricultural field. I will briefly discuss several directions of expanding plasma technologies for realizing sustainable world. They include key ideas for 1) tuning film properties, 2) plasma catalysis, 3) plasma agriculture.