Department of Physics and Measurement

Granting Departments:	Department of Physics and Measurement
Study Programme/Specialization:	Molecular chemical physics and sensorics ( in English language )
Supervisor:	prof. Dr. Ing. Martin Vrňata

Annotation

Metals of highly porous surfaces are called black metals (BMs). BMs surface properties are rather specific; they result from the combined effect of morphology - nanostructural features, surface chemistry, and prominent specific physical properties of metals. Due to large specific surface, high catalytic activity, ability to form complexes with gases that have a character of Lewis bases and also due to easy surface functionalization the BMs possess a large potential in gas sensing -especially chemiresistors. It is advantageous to arrange the active layer of sensors so that the continuous bottom layer made of BM (acting predominantly as a transducer) is surface- decorated by organic receptors. The student will carry out a systematic research of chemiresitors based on black metals (e.g. gold, platinum , antimony, tin) decorated with organic receptors which have high affinity to detected gas molecules.

Granting Departments:	Institute of Physics of the CAS, v.v.i. Department of Physics and Measurement
Study Programme/Specialization:	Molecular chemical physics and sensorics ( in Czech language )
Supervisor:	Ing. Jan Vlček, Ph.D.

Annotation

Traditional materials for solid-state chemoresistive gas sensors are semiconductor materials like metalloids, semiconductor metal oxides or organic semiconductors. Transition metal complexes are a very promising class of materials, which are mostly overlooked. They offer, depending on the transition metal ion and the design of the ligands, the possibility of various features with the desired chemical and electronic structure. These compounds are therefore suitable candidates for multiple applications such as gas/chemical sensing. Within this project, new coordination complexes (using transition metals such as Ni, Cu and other potentially attractive metals) will be developed and synthesised (in collaboration with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). The ligands will be designed appropriately and combined with the late first row transition metal ions to lead to the desired structural vacancies. In a second step, these complexes will be used for thin film processing in order to test them as active layer for gas detection. The preparation and analysis of the thin films is crucial to use them for selective and sensitive detection of harmful and toxic gas analytes. The attention will be aimed to chemoresistive and optical gas detection principles. Theoretical calculations (done in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute) will help to understand the sensing mechanism and provide a route to develop and improve the complex design in a systematic way.