STAVROS NIARCHOS FOUNDATION – FORTH 1^ST ONLINE WORSHOP

The workshop is organized by FO.R.T.H. in the context of ARCHERS (“Advancing Young Researchers’ Human Capital in Cutting Edge Technologies in the Preservation of Cultural Heritage and the Tackling of Societal Challenges, https://archers.iesl.forth.gr/). ARCHERS is a major project implemented at FORTH with exclusive donation by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF). Through ARCHERS, over 100 young doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers have been supported throughout the past five years and have carried out cutting-edge research at the Institutes of FORTH across a broad range of interdisciplinary thematics including preservation of cultural heritage and tackling of societal challenges such as environment, clean energy and health.

The workshop will be a half-day event with 3 invited talks by well-known researchers and 3 presentations by ARCHERS fellows, followed by a roundtable discussion. Further information on the program, the speakers and registration to attend the workshop is available at:

https://archers.iesl.forth.gr/imaging-cultural-heritage-space-air-sea-and-subsurface/ 

Polymer materials are often filled with inorganics to improve their properties. The cases in which the additive exists in the form of a fine nm-sized dispersion within the polymeric matrix, thus producing a nanocomposite, allow the investigation of basic scientific problems. At the same time, the behavior of polymers restricted in space or close to surfaces/interfaces can be very different from that in the bulk.

The investigation of the structure, morphology, chain conformations and dynamics of hydrophilic polymers in nanohybrids containing either layered materials or spherical nanoparticles will be presented. Mixing polymers with layered additives can lead to intercalated hybrids when the interactions between the constituents are appropriate; these can serve as model systems for the investigation of the static and dynamic properties of macromolecules in nano-confinement. On the other hand, using nanoparticles of largely different sizes provides the opportunity to vary the confining length as well the chain adsorption capacity. The polymer thermal and rheological properties are correlated with the obtained structure in an attempt to understand the relationship between the physicochemical attributes of the constituents and the final properties of the hybrids which is of great importance for the design of new materials. Additionally, polymer dynamics close to surfaces or when chains are restricted in space can be very different from that in the bulk. The confined polymer dynamics is probed utilizing polymers with different hydrophillicity, functional groups and/or different architectures to investigate the influence of the interactions between the constituents and the geometry and size of the additive on both the local motion and the segmental relaxation.

Investigations on the base properties of materials animate scientists of different backgrounds. The activity is even more engaging especially when the materials find applications in particular fields of daily life. The final user finds advantages from the basic research, while involved scientists deal with new challenges in solving concrete problems.

In this talk, I will try to illustrate some examples on the combined use of spectroscopic techniques and innovative materials: starting from the Optically Stimulated Luminescence Dosimetry (OSLD), which can find application in combating waste, continuing with hybrid photocatalytic nano-materials that can be used for virus sanitizing and finally the pump-probe spectroscopy and its employment in the field of Cultural Heritage. The experience at the University of Cagliari – Italy will guide the seminar in providing some concrete experiences.