Department of Thin Films and Nanostructures

Even neighbourhood festivals are influenced by fashion trends. On the third Saturday in September, a part of Cukrovarnická Street was traditionally transformed into a friendly and sunny neighbourhood space. This year's Zažít město jinak (Experience the City Differently) event ran along the lines of the circular economy – clothes and books were exchanged, photovoltaic devices were demonstrated and there was also positive chemistry.

The latest episode of the popular series Nezkreslená věda  focuses on a key topic of our time – the photovoltaic harnessing of the Sun's energy.

We are pleased to announce the 21st IUVSTA Summer School on Physics at Nanoscale 2024, continuing the tradition of successful summer schools on nanostructures, surfaces and thin films.

Multiscale materials are assembled from different types of nanomaterials, which themselves have unusual properties. By combining them together and integrating them into higher order hierarchies, smart matter with unique functionalities and surprising applications in many different fields can be obtained.  Research with this focus is pursued by a consortium of eight partners from academia and research, led by the Jaroslav Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

The large research infrastructure CzechNanoLab, which LNSM is part of, succeeded greatly in the the call OP JAK – Research Infrastructures I., which was was organised by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic. The modernisation project CzechNanoLab+, which has received a staggering 78 points out of 80, making it the most successful project in this call, received the requested funding with a budget of 361 million without any cuts, for equipment modernisation and innovation. The reports of the evaluation committees were published on 29 December 2023.

The award for the best student lecture at one of the world's most important materials conferences was awarded to Filip Matějka, a PhD student working at the Institute of Physics. At the Fall Meeting of the Materials Research Society in Boston as part of a symposium on plasma technologies, he presented a lecture entitled "Unlocking the Limits of Plasma-Activated Liquids and Plasma Synthesis of Silicon Nanoparticles".

Multiscale materials are assembled from different types of nanomaterials, which themselves have unusual properties. By combining and integrating them into higher-order hierarchies, smart matter with unique functionalities and surprising applications in many different fields can be obtained. A consortium of eight partners from academia and research, led by the J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences, has received financial support from the Programme Johannes Amos Comenius of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. Specifically, it was the Excellent Research Call aimed at supporting research with the potential for excellent results applicable in practice.

Professor Chien-Cheng Kuo and a group of 14 talented students from the National Sun Yat-Sen University in Taiwan recently embarked on an unforgettable journey to the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Their mission was to delve into the world of cutting-edge research and gain invaluable real-world insights.

In the quest for a sustainable and decarbonized future, renewable energy sources have emerged as the key pillars of modern energy systems. Solar photovoltaic offers a vision of a world powered by 100% renewable electricity, where access to electricity is universal. It plays a vital role in meeting various energy demands, from communication and transportation to heating and synthetic fuels. Marko Topič's lecture covered several topics related to solar cells and photovoltaics.

There are pieces of news that are hard to believe. This applies also to the one about the decease of Vláďa Cháb, who was known for his immeasurable vitality and sporting spirit. Unfortunately, his great scientific and sporting heart stopped on the night of March 5, 2023, at the age of 76. When I heard about a month ago that he was not in good health, I did not pay much attention to the news. I believed that there was no illness or obstacle that Vláďa’s spirit could not handle. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

Will we be left with high electricity bills and is the transmission network in the Czech Republic sufficiently dimensioned? Current topics of the last months became the subject of the Current and Future Energy workshop, which was organized in the Solid21 lecture hall on January 17 by the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, where research into renewable sources is running e.g. within the Pilatus project.

A multidisciplinary team of physicists and chemists from the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences managed to create a graphene aerogel resistant to flames at a temperature of 1500 °C. A mere millimetre of the material is sufficient to shield such high temperatures. The new porous graphene aerogel temporarily resists various types of high-temperature flames, including an extremely reactive hydrogen flame