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.