ERC Consolidator Grants for Ageeth Bol, Bas van de Wiel and Justin Ye
Ageeth Bol, Bas van de Wiel and Justin Ye will receive a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council. Consolidator Grants are usually for around 2 million euros. Bol intends to develop a new technology for two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (2D-TMDs). 2D-TMDs are a new kind of ultra-thin semiconductor material with surprising properties. Van de Wiel will develop a model to improve the prediction of night-time temperatures. Justin Ye will work on electronic devices based on a tunable ion-gated interface.
Bas van de Wiel, associate professor in the Turbulence and Vortex Dynamics group at TU/e, will investigate dynamics of the atmospheric boundary layer. This is the lower atmospheric layer which is influenced by warming and cooling of the earth’s surface. At night this layer is typically either turbulent or stable (quasi-laminar). If it is turbulent it mixes with the warmer air above it, which means the temperature close to the surface remains relatively high. But if the boundary layer is stable, the surface temperature can drop significantly, because no warm air descends, while the earth continues to cool due to radiation. Up to now there is no theory to predict the collapse of turbulence and it is unclear under what conditions a cold and stable layer forms. This makes it difficult to predict the night-time air temperature. Here theoretical analysis, simulation and observational research are combined in order to find a comprehensive theory in order to explain and predict the occurrence of the aforementioned regimes.
In practical this research is very important, for example for traffic and agriculture, in relation to phenomena like fog formation and frost events. In addition, stable boundary layers also occur during the day in winter and polar regions. In these situations too, prediction of the boundary layer dynamics is crucial for reliable weather and climate forecasts.
Two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (2D-TMDs) are a new kind of ultra-thin materials with surprising properties, which makes them very promising materials for a vast new range of opto-electronic devices. Up to now 2D-TMDs are made primarily using the 'Scotch tape' technique, which was also used by the Nobel prize winner André Geim to make graphene. However this method has strong limitations. It produces only very small flakes of the 2D material.
Ageeth Bol, who is a FOM-projectleader at TU/e, therefore intends to develop new methods to produce large-area 2D-TMDs and derivates. A combination of atomic layer deposition and plasma chemistry will be used. She thinks that the new method may be a stepping stone towards industrial application of these new materials.
Justin Ye's project represents an exciting new research field that is attracting the attention of many research groups around the world. Ye, who is a FOM-workgroupleader at the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at RuG, will develop electronic devices based on a tunable ion-gated interface for novel functionalities. The transistors are not conventional ones. They are built by merging the disciplines of electrochemistry, solid state physics, and device physics. By combining newly synthesized ionic materials and a well-defined interface optimized by surface analysis techniques, th ion-gated device operates with very high efficiency so that quantum phases of superconductivity and ferromagnetism can be controlled and utilized as electronic functionalities.