Charles University Centre of Advanced Materials

design, synthesis, and applications

Charles University Centre of Advanced Materials

Design, synthesis, and applications


CUCAM – is a Centre of Excellence focused on research in advanced materials. It has been established under the Chemistry Section at the Faculty of Science based on a support from Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (OP VVV “Excellent Research Teams”, project No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000417).

WE DEVELOP

a world-leading Centre of Excellence in Advanced Materials located at Charles University (CU) in Prague, specialising in the Design, Synthesis and Application.

OUR SCIENTIFIC FOCUS

is on the use of modular (i.e. low dimensional) building units for the preparation of new advanced materials, with a particular emphasis on the preparation of hybrid solids.

THE MAJOR VISION

is to overturn the conventional thinking and practice in materials science by developing methodologies that can target ‘unfeasible’ materials – that is, materials which cannot be prepared by traditional methods.

OUR METHODOLOGIES

open up routes to materials that have different properties (both chemical and topological) to those we currently have, which in turn opens up new avenues for exploitation.

People of the project


Joachim Sauer

Prof., Dr., Dr. h.c.

Interim Key Foreign Researcher

Jiří Čejka

prof. Ing., DrSc.

Excellent Researcher

Ivan Němec

prof. RNDr., Ph.D.

Excellent Researcher

Jiří Mosinger

doc. RNDr., Ph.D.

Key Researcher

Miroslav Štěpánek

doc. RNDr., Ph.D.

Key Researcher

Filip Uhlík

doc. RNDr., Ph.D.

Researcher

Róbert Gyepes

doc. RNDr., Dr.

Researcher

Andreas Erlebach

Ph.D.

Researcher

Michal Mazur

Mgr. Ph.D.

Assistant professor

Maksym Opanasenko

Doc. Ph.D.

Associate professor

Mariya Shamzhy

Doc., Ph.D.

Associate professor

Jan Přech

Ing., Ph.D.

Assistant professor

Milan Eliáš

Mgr.

Technician

Oleg Rud

Ph.D.

Researcher

Pavla Eliášová

Mgr. Ph.D.

Assistant professor

Robert Mundil

Ing., Ph.D.

Postdoctoral fellow

Goals


The goal is to develop the science and the human capital at Charles University, positioning the Centre at the forefront of this field and building an international network of collaborators and partners that cements the position of the research as a globally recognized brand. An important aspect of this is to develop the capacity of the researchers to develop industrial and commercial links to exploit novel and inventive research findings.

Strategy
We work on creative and innovative chemistry that impacts across a wide range of different areas of science and technology.

Our particular focus is in advanced materials, but we are looking outwards to cross borders between scientific fields.

We are building and leading strong networks of scientists that transcend the traditional boundaries.


The key scientific advances
●            The development of new chemistry concepts that will allow step changes in exploitation of the outstanding properties of advanced materials in a way that has not been possible previously.
●            The development of generalised synthetic strategies to target novel properties, and subsequent demonstration of these properties.
●            The use of world-leading characterisation and computational techniques to connect novel chemistry to new properties through transformative synthetic chemistry, structural characterisation and computational prediction and simulation.

THEMES

  1. Modular routes to new advanced catalysts: Developing the ADOR mechanism
  2. Hybrid electronic and optical materials based on low dimensional modular units (e.g. graphene)
  3. Advanced functional materials for medical and other applications

Equipment


DXR Raman microscope

Thermo Scientific DXR Raman microscope interfaced to an Olympus microscope equipped with the set of excitation lasers 445, 532, 633 and 780 nm used for solid state micro-samples characterization. This ...

iN10 FTIR microscope

Thermo Scientific iN10 FTIR microscope equipped with dual detector system (DTGS, MCT) is used for solid state micro-samples characterization and mapping in transmission, reflection and ATR modes (Ge crystal).

FTIR spectrometer Thermo Nicolet 6700

Combined spectroscopic system based on FTIR spectrometer Thermo Nicolet 6700 (50-12000 cm-1) and FT-Raman module Thermo Nicolet Nexus (100-3700 cm-1), Nd: YVO4 laser 1064 nm). The system ...

MonoVista CRS+

The research grade micro/macro Raman system MonoVista CRS+ (Spectroscopy & Imaging GmbH, Germany) interfaced to an Olympus microscope equipped with 532 and 785 nm excitation lasers. This system enables ...

Electrospinning equipment

Laboratory electrospinning equipment for preparation of photoactive nanofiber membranes. The laboratory setup consists of a syringe needle connected to a high-voltage (5 to 50 kV) direct current power supply, a ...

Set-up for irradiation experiments

Laboratory set-up for irradiation experiments including light sources (lasers, solar simulator), light detectors and detectors for O2 and NO. We are using this for all light-activated experiments, using monochromatic ...

Varian 4000 UV-VIS spectrometer

Varian 4000 UV-VIS spectrometer (Agilent, USA) equipped with an integration sphere can be used in transmission or reflection mode. Integrating spheres are ideal for measuring the transmission of turbid, translucent ...

Quantaurus-QY Plus spectrofluorimeter

Quantaurus-QY Plus spectrofluorimeter (Hamamatsu, Japan) is designed to measure the instantaneous absolute value of emission quantum yield using the photoluminescence method. We are using the machine for measuring quantum yields ...

FLS 980 spectrofluorimeter

FLS 980 spectrofluorimeter (Edinburgh Instruments, UK). Two detectors (single photon counting PMTs are available to cover the wavelength range from 200 nm – 1700 nm) with independent exit slits and three ...

Bruker D8 ADVANCE powder diffractometer

Bruker D8 ADVANCE powder diffractometer allows to be operated in three modes:

  • reflection measurements using the Bragg-Brentano parafocussing arrangement,

  • reflection measurements using the parallel-beam arrangement,

  • transmission measurements.

The instrument is ...

Nicolet™ iS50 FTIR Spectrometer

Nicolet™ iS50 FTIR Spectrometer equipped with two MCT/B and two DTGS detectors is a core of sophisticated system exploited to investigate surface chemistry of nanomaterials. In-situ set-up (shown in ...

Micromeritics 3Flex volumetric Surface Area Analyzer

The laboratory is equipped with Micromeritics 3Flex volumetric Surface Area Analyzer for determining textural properties of solid materials. The instrument allows measurements of total surface area, pore volume and calculation ...

Microscope JEOL JEM-NeoARM 200F

JEOL JEM-NeoARM 200F Microscope is equipped with: • Schottky-type Field Emission Gun (30-200 kV voltage) • Condenser Lens with Cs aberration correction • CMOS camera (4096 x 4096 pixels, up to 200 fps ...

Presentations


Presentations from CUCAM WORKSHOP (February 8, 2017)

Opening of the High-Resolution Electron Microscopy Laboratory
Jan 14th 2019

3D VS 2D ZEOLITES (Petr Nachtigall)

PHOTOACTIVE NANOFIBER MATERIALS (Jiří Mosinger)

CUCAM Charles University Centre for Advanced Materials (Russell Morris)

Synthesis and Application of Novel Porous Materials (Maksym Opanasenko)

Self-assembled systems based on polyelectrolytes: Properties and applications (Miroslav Štěpánek)

Research Activities


CUCAM project

New publications


Intrinsic valley polarization in 2D magnetic MXenes: surface engineering induced spin-valley coupling

Journal of Materials Chemistry C , 9, 11132-11141 (2021)

Shuo Li, Junjie He, Lukáš Grajciar and  Petr Nachtigall

MWW and MFI Frameworks as Model Layered Zeolites: Structures, Transformations, Properties, and Activity

ACS Catalysis, 11(4), 2366–2396. (2021)  link

Shamzhy, M., Gil, B., Opanasenko, M., Roth, W. J., Čejka, J.

Researchers have found a new approach for zeolite synthesis.

Researchers from the Department of Physical and Macromolecular Chemistry (Valeryia Kasneryk, Mariya Shamzhy, Qiudi Yue, Michal Mazur, Russell E. Morris, Jiří Čejka and Maksym Opanasenko), in collaboration with colleagues from ...

Publications


2021 (18 articles in international impacted journals)
2020 (27 articles in international impacted journals, 1 book chapter)
Z. Slanina, F. Uhlík, L. Bao, T. Akasaka, X. Lu, and L. Adamowicz,
Eu@C86 isomers: Calculated relative populations
Fullerenes, Nanotubes and Carbon Nanostructures, 28(7), 2020

DOI, BibTeX

2019 (45 articles in international impacted journals)
Z. Slanina, F. Uhlík, W. Shen, T. Akasaka, X. Lu, and L. Adamowicz,
Calculations of the relative populations of Lu@C82 isomers
Fullerenes, Nanotubes and Carbon Nanostructures, 27(9), 2019

DOI, BibTeX

Z. Slanina, F. Uhlík, L. Feng, T. Akasaka, X. Lu, and L. Adamowicz,
Calculations of the Lu3N@C80 two-isomer equilibrium
Fullerenes, Nanotubes and Carbon Nanostructures, 27(5), 2019

DOI, BibTeX

2018 (29 articles in international impacted journals)
2017 (40 articles in international impacted journals)
Z. Slanina, F. Uhlík, L. Feng, and L. Adamowicz,
Sc2O@C78: Calculations of the yield ratio for two observed isomers
Fullerenes, Nanotubes and Carbon Nanostructures, 25(2), 2017

DOI, BibTeX