Technology in the service of humanity is the theme of this year's IVA 100 list from the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA). The purpose of the list is to present current research with business potential from Sweden's higher education institutions.
Included in this year's list are two research projects linked to the Department of Physics. Research leaders for the selected projects are Christoph Langhammer, Professor at the division of Chemical Physics, and Timur Shegai, Associate Professor at the division of Nano and Biophysics.
Read more about their research projects below and see links to the companies within which the research results are realized.
Nanofluidic Scattering Microscopy – the next generation of nanotechnology that can provide ground-breaking discoveries
"In Life Science, studies of biomolecules such as proteins, DNA and RNA are crucial for understanding diseases and developing new drugs and vaccines. The problem is that these biomolecules are in the nanoworld and are too small to study with conventional microscopes. We have developed the next generation of nanotechnology to study and analyse individual biomolecules and at the same time generate important information about them. We do this with an optical instrument combined with nanofluidic chips and software with machine learning/AI. By offering researchers this new tool, they can answer their questions in a completely new way, thereby accelerating their research in order to make ground-breaking discoveries.”
2D semiconductor with perfect edges – a game-changing material
“We at Smena have developed a new game-changing material, which is useful for numerous applications. The starting point of our material is an abundant mineral called molybdenite, whose price is only 5 dollar per kilogram. Using a scalable, patented, and environmentally friendly process, we managed to produce a large number of edges in flakes of natural molybdenite. These edges contain many "active sites", which are useful for sensing gas molecules and electrocatalytic water splitting (production of hydrogen).”