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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NANOTRANS (TRANSPORT OF SOFT MATTER AT THE NANOSCALE)

Teaser

Summary

NANOTRANS consortium comprises academic and private partners spanning seven EU countries. We have identified the ITN program as an ideal framework to create a collaborative research platform for training young nanoscientists with suitable scientific profiles and a specific range of skills who will be able to deal with the fundamental and technological challenges of the future. NANOTRANS will provide a rigorous, balanced, and timely supra-disciplinary training program delivered by Europeâ€™s (and worldâ€™s) leading scientists in the field. Moreover, we will provide a unique opportunity to move between industry and academia, which is crucial to foster inter-sectorial exchange of individuals and ideas.

The scientific objective of the proposal is to acquire fundamental understanding of complex fluid flow in nano-confinement and to design novel materials and applications for sustainable growth. This is one of the core problems of technological development whose key demands are downscaling the applications and controlling the non-equilibrium dynamics (e.g. design of â€œsmartâ€ nanomaterials, nanofluidics, â€œlab on a chipâ€ devices, energy production and storage, drug deliveryâ€¦). We expect that new solutions for providing sustainable sources of energy and water will emerge at the nanoscale where the behaviour of matter departs from the common expectations. The non-equilibrium physics at the nanoscale is different from its macroscopic counterpart in many ways: gradients are larger and confinement (nanochannels, surfaces, interfaces) plays a dominant role. Due to smaller numbers of particles thermal fluctuations are stronger, which fundamentally alters the thermodynamic behaviour (e.g. heat transfer). In strongly confined fluids at the molecular level, flow properties deviate from continuum hydrodynamics predictions due to the granularity of the fluid components. At larger scales, the fluid flow is coupled to colloidal interactions and to thermodynamic gradients. Processes like electrokinetics, thermophoresis, diffusiophoresis etc. play a key role in biological processes and are at the core of nanotechnology.

For this specific focus, multidisciplinary and inter-sectorial approaches that are inherently a part of soft matter research are crucial. The experimental and theoretical methods are presently at a stage where exploration of key processes is viable and our research program promises fundamental and applied breakthroughs. We will establish long-term collaborations structuring the EU research environment and bridging the gap between academic and industrial research. The impact of NANOTRANS will be broad. The overwhelming goal is to train young researchers with unique profiles, who will work across sectors and might become future leaders in the emerging and rapidly growing fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Our research and their future careers should have an impact on some of the core challenges of modern society: energy production and storage, novel disease treatment strategies and sustainable development. Investing in research in the emerging field of soft matter at the nanoscale is determinant for Europeâ€™s position as the world-leading academic and technological power.

Work performed

In the first period, the consortium has recruited 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESR) who are being trained at the NANOTRANS academic and private sector nodes. NANOTRANS network has managed to attract an excellent group of young researchers who all entered the network training program. At the nodes, they started to perform research activities.

NANOTRANS research is organized in three scientific workpackages (WP), each containing several research projects. WP1 is focused on understanding the physics of flow in nanofluidic setups. Within WP1, progress has been made on understanding water transport through single nanotubes within experiments performed by the ESR suggesting the potential for realization of advanced nanouidic functionalities via design of BN-C heterostructures. Work on translocation of colloids and polymers through channels has also delivered interesting results relevant for designing applications such as precise DNA-sequencing. Finally, flow of ionic liquids between graphene sheets, which is key to understand lubrication and design energy storage applications, has been studied in a series of original experiments. The WP2 focuses on theory and computer simulations with the goal of better understanding the fundamental principles of phoretic transport at the nanoscale. The work performed in the first period within WP2 ranges from atomistic ab-initio simulations of water at the interfaces, to dynamics of electrolytes and ionic correlations, electrokinetic and electroacoustic effects. A decisive breakthrough has been achieved on understanding phoretic transport of proteins, which is crucial to understand in order to design better techniques for protein characterization. In WP3, macromolecules in thermodybnamic gradients are being studied. Projects include modeling of phoretic effects, active fluids in confinement, flow of fluid mixtures, transport of semiflexible polymers and ring polymers, as well as designing particle-based gels for applications.

Besides their research dissemination the students and PIs have been involved in a large number of public outreach activities and NANOTRANS network has organized specialized training sessions where the ESRs are trained by the experts in advanced topics,m which are not usually available within standard PhD curricula. ESrs have also been trained in a number of soft skills including writing skills, presentation skills, ethics, and European funding opportunities. ESRs have been involved in several outreach activities and also self-organized a scientific workshop where they prepared a solid scientific program with ESR reports, training on machine learning and an outreach session where they created a video about their work and general scientific questions relevant to NANOTRANS.

Final results

NANOTRANS participants already published more than 20 original scientific publications in high impact international scientific journals, out of which 7 manuscripts are co-authored by NANOTRANS ESRs. NANOTRANS PIs received several prestigious awards, among which are: Boltzmann Medal, Elected Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Sir Eric Rideal Lecture of the SCI/RSC, Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize, Royal Society of Chemistry, Phllip Leverhulme Prize awarded by The Leverhulme Trust, Nernst-Haber-Bodenstein Prize, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation, Corday-Morgan Prize, RSC, Hinshelwood Lecturer, University of Oxford, and Silver CNRS medal. In all areas covered by the network, significant progress beyond the state of the art has been achieved on the fundamental side of the questions, as well as on the transfer of the knowledge to technologies. While these are already encouraging results, it is expected that more key discoveries will emerge in the second phase of the project.