TACOMA · Towards Application specific tailoring of CarbOn nanoMAterials
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2019-12-01 → 2023-06-22
- EU contribution
- €278,606
- Participants
- 3
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Towards Application specific tailoring of CarbOn nanoMAterials
The goal of this project is to connect materials (mainly carbon-based) physicochemical properties to their observed performance, solving the yet unknown "why do carbon-based materials work as sensor surfaces". There is an ongoing debate in the literature where the performance of carbon nanomaterials are suspected to be related to their (i) oxygen functional groups, (ii) metal residues from growth processes or (iii) combination of these two. Carbon-based materials are cheap to manufacture and can be tailored for application specific purposes when their property-performance relation is known in enough detail. This is important for society as the need and desire for e.g. personalized medicine and point-of-care testing has increased and is further increasing. Furthermore, there is a demand to answer to the increase in the observed neurological disorders due to the population living longer and reaching an age where conditions such as Parkinson's are "normal". As many carbon-based materials are biocompatible, there is much hope and promise in these materials to provide answers and solutions to the mentioned problems. It is extremely important for the society as a whole to improve the quality of life of all patients with neurological disorders and provide solutions to the increased burden laid to the healthcare systems. The overall objective is to provide enough evidence (data) to show that we understand the property-performance relation well enough to transfer most of the hands-on laboratory work to computer simulations. When enough data is provided, we can compute and simulate the materials which would be ideal for specific applications. Then we can confirm these simulations in the laboratory and save a tremendous amount of time instead of continuing the "de facto" approach today where laboratory trial-and-error tests are carried out. This action provided detailed physical and chemical insights to many carbon based materials. Majority of the results of this action revolve around electrochemistry, namely mapping optimal materials for charge transport and storage. The scientific work executed during this action resulted in large amounts of data that continue to produce publications at least until the year 2024.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Impact of carbon nanomaterials (CNM) on society can be significant as they have the potential to revolutionize applications in sensors, catalysis, supercapacitors and energy storage. For sensors, currently used materials such as glassy carbon (GC), cannot selectively and sensitively detect neurotransmitters in physiological environment and the required surface properties in a given application environment are not known. However, by understanding the connection between sensing performance and material properties we can enable tailor-made materials. Unfortunately, even with the rigorously studied GC, this is not known. This can be attributed to the limited access to highly sensitive and high-resolution characterization methods and especially to the lack of in situ measurements. TACOMA-Project offers implementation of the world’s first in situ soft X-ray Spectroscopy (X-RS) setup with Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory and NASA based on the new transition edge sensor technology allowing detailed spectroscopic studies of carbon, its surface functional groups and various carbon-metal bonds under realistic use environments. Further, a novel hybrid characterization method combining photoelectron, absorption and X-ray emission spectroscopy to study CNM as fabricated, chemically modified and aged under laboratory conditions will be established. TACOMA is supported by a network of collaborators providing (i) access to machine learning and atomistic simulations that are integrated with the experimental work, (ii) insight into electrochemistry and (iii) access to high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. The TACOMA-Project will address questions such as what is the root cause of the electrocatalytic properties of CNM and how surface of the CNM evolves in the application environment? This will realize the huge potential of CNMs and allow the future fellow to transfer this unique knowledge of CNM and X-RS to European universities, industry and synchrotron facilities.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- OULUN YLIOPISTO · OuluCoordinatorFinland
- AALTO KORKEAKOULUSAATIO SR · EspooFinland
- BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY · STANFORDUnited States
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union