Physics

Writing a successful PhD thesis: They know how to find the flow

Writing a doctoral thesis is a complex task. Besides the requirements of high scientific and pedagogic quality, a thesis should also be accessible to the reader. At best, it should be enjoyable to read – like a well written novel. But how do you do it? We asked Sophie Viaene and Ferry Nugroho, who wrote the best doctoral theses at the Department of Physics at Chalmers in 2018.

Björn Wickman and Cristian Tunsu, researchers at Chalmers

Removing toxic mercury from contaminated water

Water which has been contaminated with mercury and other toxic heavy metals is a major cause of environmental damage and health problems worldwide. Now, researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, present a totally new way to clean contaminated water, through an electrochemical process. The results are published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

Portrait of Chalmers researcher Christoph Langhammer

His research is paving the way for the hydrogen vehicles of the future

He rides his bike to his sailing boat in the marina and doesn’t own a car. But much of his work involves paving the way for hydrogen vehicles’ breakthrough. Physics professor Christoph Langhammer at Chalmers is developing hydrogen gas sensors that will hopefully help to get us there. In his work, he gets to know the smallest individuals that can make this possible.

Better catalysts with the help of fine-tuning at the atomic level

By studying materials down to the atomic level, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have found a way to make catalysts more efficient and environmentally friendly. The results have been published in Nature Communications. The methods can be used to improve many different types of catalysts.

Clean water for the win!

A patented innovation to detect and selectively remove heavy metals, such as mercury, from water has attracted a great deal of attention lately. Now, Chalmers Assistant Professor Björn Wickman and his colleagues at the startup Atium have won another prestigious award. On Friday 15 June 2018 they received the SKAPA award at the residency of the County Governor of Västra Götaland. The prize was...

A new way to improve catalytic processes

How does the catalytic activity of a nanoparticle depend on size and shape? This is a fundamental question that has been studied by PhD Student Mikkel Jørgensen and Professor Henrik Grönbeck, using a newly developed computational technique for first principles based kinetic modelling.

He sets sail in the world of catalysts

Catalysts are needed to trigger chemical reactions. We have all heard of catalytic converters in cars. However, catalysts have countless of uses in society, as well as many other parts of life. For Professor Henrik Grönbeck, the year he spent in Berlin completing his master’s degree in 1990 was a catalyst. As the Wall came down and Germany reunited, he started his research career. “I participated...

Awarded for his work on engine pollution control

Reducing pollution from engine exhaust is an important and very challenging task in our society. Physics Doctor Maxime Van den Bossche has worked out models that explain how molecules “dance” on the surfaces during catalytic reactions. This knowledge can be used to understand how the exhaust from natural gas engines can be cleaned efficiently.

Chemical Physics News

2019

2019-10-01 We have vacant post-doc positions with Computational Catalysis. Have a look at:

https://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/Working-at-Chalmers/Vacancies/Pages/default.aspx.

2019-09-30 Congratulations to the paper "A nanofluidic device for parallel single nanoparticle catalysis in solution" by Christoph Langhammer's group (Joachim, Sara and Christoph) with their collaborators published on Nature Communications. See the https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12458-1.

2019-09-01 Congratulations to the paper "Effective removal of mercury from aqueous streams via electrochemical alloy formation on platinum" by Björn and Cristian be the one of the 50 most read Nature Communications chemistry and materials science articles published in 2018. See the link: https://www.nature.com/collections/cfdehgffbj?sap-outbound-id=458290895E2603A1F9FFA014014C6C33B92D6B69&mkt-key=005056A5C6311ED999A0A026002039B0

2019-08-20 Congratulations to Alvaro and Henrik for a new paper "CO2 adsorption on hydroxylated In2O3(110)" published in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics and they also got the frontcover image for the journal, see

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/CP/C9CP04097H#!divAbstract

2019-08-19 We have a new PhD student Yingxin Feng. She will work with Henrik and her project is about the abatement of the "laughing gas" N2O from the engine's exhaust. Welcome!

2019-08-19 Mikkel and Henrik have published a perspective paper in ACS Catalysis on

reaction kinetics on metal nanoparticles, see: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscatal.9b02228

2019-05-31 Congratulations to Alvaro, Iwan and Sara for passing the licentiate defense! Well done!

2019-05-17 Congratulations to Adam for a very successful PhD thesis defense! Much applause to Dr. Arvidsson!

2019-04-01 Congratulations to Ferry and his coworkers for a new paper published in Nature

Materials, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-019-0325-4

2019-03-29 Congratulations to Mikkel for a very successful PhD thesis defense! Now he is Dr. Jørgensen.

2019-03-06 New paper by Mikkel and Henrik on 'Strain Affects CO Oxidation on Metallic Nanoparticles Non-linearly' in Topics in Catalysis, see https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11244-019-01145-6

2019-02-15 Many congratulations to Ferry for winning The Best Thesis Award 2018!

https://www.chalmers.se/en/departments/physics/news/Pages/They-know-how-to-write-a-doctoral-thesis-with-flow.aspx

2018

2018-11-19 Welcome Dr. Gregor Zerjav to join our group as a visiting researcher. He will work here for six months.

2018-11-09 We have a new PhD student, Noemi Bosio. She will work with Henrik. Welcome!

2018-11-05 Björn Wickman was interviewed by the Swedish Radio concerning fuel cells. Listen at:

https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1174823 (starting at 42:15).

2018-11-01 Congratulations to both Björn and Christoph for receiving funding from VR!

2018-10-12 Two open PhD positions in Computational Catalysis. More information at:

http://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/Working-at-Chalmers/Vacancies/Pages/default.aspx?rmpage=job&rmjob=6794.

2018-10-02 Congratulations to David for his outstanding lic presentations!

2018-09-28 Congratulations to Mikael for his outstanding lic presentations!

2018-09-25 New paper by Alvaro, Henrik and their co-workers at Lund University on "Steps control the dissociation of CO2 on Cu(100)" in J. Am. Chem. Soc., see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.8b07906.

2018-08-29 New paper by Ferry, Iwan and their coworkers is recently accepted in ACS NANO, see

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.8b02835.

2018-08-21 What is the entropy of small molecules in the porous materials--zeolites? This has been investigated by Mikkel, Lin and Henrik and recently published in J. Phys. Chem. C, see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jpcc.8b05382.

2018-08-03 New paper in ACS Catalysis by Maxime , Henrik and co-workers at Lund University, University of Florida and Ohio State University on ligand effects in the reactivity of PdO(101), see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscatal.8b02191.

2018-07-13 How does strain influence catalytic activity of nanoparticles? This is studied by Mikkel, Henrik and

colleagues at the Competence Centre for Catalysis and recently published in Nature Communications, see http://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05055-1.

2018-05-24 Congratulations to Ferry for a very successful PhD thesis defense! He will continue his research work in our group as a post-doc.

2018-05-09 Congratulations to Alvaro, Henrik and their coworkers for a new paper "Initial oxidation of Cu(100) studied by X-ray photo-electron spectroscopy and density functional theory calculations" published in Surface Science, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.susc.2018.04.015.

2018-05-09 Congratulations to Maxime, Henrik and their coworker for a new paper "Tight-Binding Approximation Enhanced Global Optimization" published in J. Chem. Theory Comput., https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jctc.8b00039.

2018-05-09 Björn, Henrik and their coworkers were invited to design the cover for the ChemSusChem issue

for their latest published paper (see the previous news). They also got the chance to appear in the “cover profile” in the same issue. Congratulations!

The cover and cover profile are at:

https://doi.org/10.1002/cssc.201800840

https://doi.org/10.1002/cssc.201800842

2018-05-07 Congratulations to Björn and his coworkers from Linköping University for a new paper

"W‐Based Atomic Laminates and Their 2D Derivative W1.33C MXene with Vacancy Ordering" published

in Advanced Materials, https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201706409.

2018-04-09 Mikael, Zafer, Johan and Lin formed a table tennis group named "Spin-racket Coupling". They will attend the pingistävlingen this year. Good luck with the match! Mycket bra!

2018-04-06 We welcome a new group member Ievgen to do further research as a post doc in our group. His research area is to develop a methodology for the study of heterogeneous catalysis on individual metal nanoparticles.

2018-03-27 Congratulations to Lin and her coworkers for a new paper "Effect of Al-distribution on oxygen activation over Cu-CHA" published in Catalysis Science & Technology, https://doi.org/10.1039/C8CY00083B.

2018-03-26 Congratulations to Björn and his coworkers for a new paper "Fuel cell measurements with cathode catalysts of sputtered Pt3Y thin films" published in ChemSusChem, https://doi.org/10.1002/cssc.201800023.

2018-03-25 Congratulations to Aadesh and his coworkers for a new paper "Hydrogen Treatment and FeOOH overlayer: Effective approaches for enhancing the photoelectrochemical water oxidation performance of bismuth vanadate thin films" published in Catalysis Today, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cattod.2018.03.041

2018-03-14 Congratulations to Mikkel and Henrik for a new paper "The Site‐Assembly Determines Catalytic Activity of Nanoparticles" published in Angewandte Chemie, https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201802113.

2018-03-04 Open PhD-position in computational nano-catalysis. More information at:

http://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/Working-at-Chalmers/Vacancies/Pages/default.aspx?rmpage=job&rmjob=6065

Published: Tue 01 Oct 2019.