Smoltek and cutting-edge research in nanotechnology

Smol­tek con­ducts advanced applied indus­tri­al research, where research­ers use strictly sci­entif­ic meth­ods and prin­ciples. Most of the time, the research­ers start from car­bon nan­ofibers to then invest­ig­ate which oth­er metals, dielec­trics etc. can be coated on the nan­ofibers (in sev­er­al lay­ers) in order to achieve the desired properties.

Just over a third of all employ­ees at Smol­tek are doc­tors – or PhDs as they usu­ally say. PhD is an aca­dem­ic research title, and our doc­tors have been awar­ded in the fol­low­ing areas: Tech­no­logy and busi­ness strategy, The­or­et­ic­al Sol­id-State phys­ics, Micro­elec­tron­ics and Nanos­cience, Chem­istry, Mater­i­als Sci­ence, and Micro­tech­no­logy and Nanoscience.

Smol­tek are enter­ing new applic­a­tions, based on car­bon nan­ofibers, that no one has tried before. This means that there are also no estab­lished the­or­ies or oth­er research res­ults to start from. This also means that Smoltek’s research­ers mainly work hypo­thes­is-driv­en, i.e. they must invest­ig­ate how dif­fer­ent mater­i­als, gases, pro­cesses, tools, etc., should work or which nano­struc­tures should be produced.

Advanced hypo­theses and mater­i­al selec­tion
It can some­times take sev­er­al months of work to arrive at the best way to coat a cata­lyst mater­i­al (for example, iridi­um) on the car­bon nan­ofibers. Dur­ing the work, the research­ers try to determ­ine, among oth­er things, wheth­er the iridi­um should be crys­tal­line or amorph­ous. Should the car­bon nan­ofibers be attached and grown on a smooth or rough sur­face? Should it be metal­lic or made up of vari­ous oxides? Will it be bet­ter if you mix in some oth­er trans­ition met­al in the sub­strate? If so, which one? And so on…. In these exper­i­ments, count­less com­bin­a­tions are tested where res­ults are meas­ured and com­pared, and the research­ers begin to under­stand caus­al rela­tion­ships (what affects what?).

In the example above, with iridi­um, exist­ing research was stud­ied by Dr. Xin Wen, who before her time at Smol­tek did her dis­ser­ta­tion on cata­lyt­ic nan­o­particles at Chalmers. Ini­tially, she stud­ied sci­entif­ic pub­lic­a­tions to increase know­ledge of how iridi­um could con­ceiv­ably be depos­ited on a car­bon nan­ofibers in an elec­tro­lyz­er anode. Hypo­theses were then set up, i.e. Dr Xin Wen made vari­ous assump­tions about how iridi­um should work togeth­er with car­bon nan­ofibers, and then a series of exper­i­ments were per­formed to see if the hypo­theses were cor­rect, as well as to arrive at the best configuration.

This is a highly sim­pli­fied descrip­tion, as there are usu­ally many para­met­ers that affect the out­come; for example, how much hydro­gen is pro­duced with a cer­tain amount of elec­tric power in an electrolyzer?

Most of the time, this work means that a large num­ber of exper­i­ments must be car­ried out, where, for example, the length, thick­ness and dens­ity of the nan­ofibers on the sub­strate (should they be placed sparsely or densely, in which pat­tern?) etc. are var­ied. The next step is to con­trol the tem­per­at­ure of the pro­cess cham­ber, gas flow (which gases inter­act best?) where pres­sure and geo­metry are to be var­ied. But before pla­cing the mater­i­al sample (pro­to­type) in the pro­cess cham­ber, you also need to test dif­fer­ent pre­treat­ment meth­ods, and which metals are most suit­able to start grow­ing fibers on. 

This work is car­ried out by Smol­tek’s research­ers at Chalmers’ clean­room labor­at­ory for nan­o­tech­no­logy, called MC2. It takes place partly in Smol­tek’s pro­pri­et­ary PECVD tool, partly in Chalmers tools. PECVD stands for Plasma Enhanced Chem­ic­al Vapor Depos­ition and involves con­trolling gases in a cham­ber with the help of a plasma and elec­tric fields, so that the gas molecules react in a spe­cif­ic way, which starts a pro­cess so that the nan­ofibers (placed on cata­lysts, in pre­de­ter­mined pat­terns) start to “grow” in the dir­ec­tion of the elec­tric field from the substrate.

At Chalmers, but also at oth­er uni­ver­sit­ies and research insti­tutes, scan­ning elec­tron micro­scopes and oth­er advanced equip­ment are then used to invest­ig­ate the mor­pho­logy of fiber growth and later how the nan­o­particles of iridi­um have attached to the fibers, or to meas­ure effi­ciency, losses, etc. Based on this, the research­ers try to under­stand how they can improve on the next material.

In this way, Smol­tek research­ers man­u­fac­ture extremely small struc­tures, where the basis is car­bon nan­ofiber sur­faces, which is then func­tion­ing as an elec­trode, or a sensor, or an elec­trocata­lyst by using dif­fer­ent nan­o­tech­no­lo­gies to depos­it vari­ous lay­ers on top of the car­bon nanofiber.

In order to do this, rel­ev­ant post­gradu­ate train­ing is required, as well as an estab­lished net­work with­in the cur­rent research in the field. Many of Smol­tek’s col­lab­or­a­tions are car­ried out with the research­ers’ former col­leagues, who are usu­ally pro­fess­ors, or oth­er col­lab­or­a­tions with research groups at vari­ous universities.

Research con­fer­ences, peer review and pub­lic­a­tions
Smol­tek’s research­ers act­ively par­ti­cip­ate at vari­ous sci­entif­ic con­fer­ences, where a mix of aca­dem­ic and privately fun­ded research is presen­ted and dis­cussed. To be able to present their latest res­ults at these con­fer­ences, the con­tri­bu­tion must first be approved by dif­fer­ent com­mit­tees, con­sist­ing of prom­in­ent research­ers in the respect­ive fields. These assess wheth­er the exper­i­ments can be repeated, they study the pub­lic­a­tion’s ref­er­ences to, among oth­er things, under­stand that the res­ults con­sti­tute new and rel­ev­ant know­ledge, and they review that the study is of suf­fi­ciently high qual­ity for reli­able con­clu­sions to be drawn.

Smol­tek’s research­ers write sci­entif­ic pub­lic­a­tions partly to get a stamp of approv­al that the research is of the right qual­ity, partly to show mer­it when Smol­tek applies for research grants. This is also what Smol­tek emphas­izes to make it clear that the com­pany con­ducts highly qual­i­fied research, which by defin­i­tion means that Smol­tek cre­ates new knowledge.

Smol­tek’s research is reviewed and pub­lished in sci­entif­ic journ­als after a so-called peer review pro­cess, which con­firms its aca­dem­ic qual­ity. For instance, this example.

This is a stand­ard in the research world and con­firms that what Smol­tek presents is new know­ledge. In order to have the research pub­lished, it must be unique and con­trib­ute to the research front. The same cri­ter­ia apply to the com­pany’s pat­ent applic­a­tions – Smol­tek can only obtain a pat­ent if the applic­a­tion devel­ops new innov­a­tions and has a qual­i­fied invent­ive step.

Smol­tek reg­u­larly par­ti­cip­ates in sci­entif­ic con­fer­ences, such as the Elec­tro­chem­ic­al Soci­ety (ECS), where the com­pany’s research res­ults are presen­ted to a sci­entif­ic audi­ence. These con­fer­ences also place high demands on the qual­ity of the research.

In sum­mary, Smol­tek con­ducts qual­i­fied research, which is shown through the com­pany’s research grants, col­lab­or­a­tions with uni­ver­sit­ies and industry, as well as par­ti­cip­a­tion in sci­entif­ic con­fer­ences and pub­lic­a­tions in sci­entif­ic journals.

Join us and become a super­star in nanotechnology!

Would you like to work with advanced research at Smol­tek?
Do you like: 

• For­mu­late research questions
• Make a hypothesis
• Data col­lec­tion
• Data ana­lys­is
• Draw con­clu­sions
• Pub­lish in a sci­entif­ic context

Wel­come to send in a spon­tan­eous applic­a­tion.