Successes of FZU at the international conference NANOCON

Scientists from the Institute of Physics shone at this year's 15th edition of the NANOCON international conference, which took place on the 18th-20th October 2023 in Brno. The conference focused on nanomaterials and nanotechnologies for sustainable energy and environment and attracted 260 participants from 28 different countries.

The NANOCON 2023 conference is the first conference in the Czech Republic focused only on nanomaterials and their research, applications and potential impact on the environment and human health. Experts from 14 Czech universities, ten research institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic took part in it this year from the Czech Republic, a third of all participants were students of doctoral programs. The international conference is organized by TANGER together with the Czech Society for New Materials and Technologies.

Nanotechnology research is currently increasingly focused on specific applications and solutions to current issues such as sustainability and healthcare. This trend was confirmed by most of the 77 lectures delivered, including both plenary ones. These were devoted to nanocatalysis for circular chemistry (Professor Jagadeesh Rajenahally) and the use of nanotechnology in the treatment of diabetes (Dr. Rabah Boukherroub).

On the second day, Dr. Martin Ledinský opened the session of the Advanced Methods of Preparation and Characterization of Nanosystems section with a requested lecture entitled Thin Films for Photovoltaics under Zoom. "I presented about new possibilities of using thin films for photovoltaics and showed that it is essential to research these materials in nano dimensions," Ledinský summarized the topic of his lecture. The contribution of professor Kamila Kočí focused on the effective reduction of CO2 to renewable fuel was also devoted to solar energy in the section.

As part of the traditional competition for the best poster, researchers from FZU were awarded twice. Out of the 135 posters presented, the jury chose Dr. Matěj Hývl's presentation as the best, focusing on the characterization of the electrical properties of nanostructured solar cells and the application of innovative techniques. The poster presented his research focused on the analysis of artifacts arising when measuring the electrical properties of materials and how to remove these artifacts (Contact Force in Current-Detecting Atomic Force Microscopy – Moving Towards C-AFM Tomography in Photovoltaic Research). Engineer Michal Kočí won third place for his poster dedicated to sensors based on diamond heterostructures, which are intended for air quality monitoring (Gas sensors based on diamond heterostructures for air quality monitoring).