Czech-German Scientific Conference on Nanotechnologies and Advanced Materials

16-17/05/2019, CEITEC BUT Brno, Czech Republic    

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (MEYS) and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) co-organised the Czech-German Scientific Conference on Nanotechnologies and Advanced Materials, held on 16th and 17th May 2019 in the premises of the Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC) in Brno, Czech Republic. SINNCE researchers participated in the frame of the panel on Advanced Nanotechnologies.

The conference was arranged as a 2-day lunch-to-lunch event for up to 150 participants, providing a platform for strategy debates on research, technology development and innovation in the fields of nanotechnologies and advanced materials. Scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs and innovators were invited to take part in the conference.

An overview of the latest developments in research and innovation policy in the Czech Republic and Germany has framed the conference, followed by 4 parallel panel sessions – focused on the topics of advanced nanotechnologies, lightweight functional materials, Mobility 4.0 and Industry 4.0, and research infrastructures – thus bringing together research and business communities for discussions on extending the frontiers of research, promoting the public-private partnerships and scaling-up of companies aimed at the commercialisation of expertise deriving from the respective scientific fields.  

Nanotechnology is a rapidly developing field with over 10,000 publications per year in the last decade and enormous innovation potential. To exploit this potential, however, an interdisciplinary approach should be adopted, enabling complex research and innovation issues to be addressed, including the linking of bio- and nano-sciences. The panel on Advanced Nanotechnologies has, therefore, focused on selected topics of nanoscale science and technology, with a particular emphasis put on interdisciplinarity in this area. The panel addressed the new trends in nanosciences and nanotechnology, including unique properties of different functional nanostructures (nanoparticles, nanocrystals, nanowires, surfaces, ultra-thin layers, multilayers) and 2D materials (graphene, TMD). Possible applications include nanophotonics (plasmons, metamaterials), nanomagnetism (spintronics, magnonics), nanoelectronics (molecular electronics, quantum devices) as well as (bio)sensors and biomedicine. The panel also addressed the advances in nanomanufacturing and nanocharacterisation that are important for applications. 

The panel was hosted by the SINNCE coordinator Tomáš Šikola and included a talk by SINNCE RGL Miroslav Kolíbal (CEITEC), along with the guest speakers from Czech Academy of Sciences, Charles University, Fraunhofer Institute and Leibnitz Institute (full program see here).