Nanotechnology Crossing Borders Event

Pathogens surround us omnipresent and are a major challenge to our daily lives not only since Covid 19. Current decontamination procedures using liquid disinfectants come with several disadvantages, such as large amount of waste production. Nanomaterials can be used to make surfaces less susceptible for pathogen accumulation, facilitate cleaning or to directly kill bacteria and viruses. In this plenary lecture, we focus on new types of Antimicrobial coatings using magnetic nanoparticles for thermal disinfection of surfaces. The coatings are designed to be inductively heated, enabling fast and efficient cleaning of contaminated surfaces, significantly reducing waste production and increasing e.g. hospital safety.

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Light and electrons are an important contributor to the transition of the chemical industry towards climate neutrality. When combined in a smart way, together they efficiently and selectively promote chemical reactions, without excessive use of energy or formation of undesired byproducts. Furthermore, they provide routes to novel molecular architectures, which are hard to reach or even inaccessible by conventional thermal processes or separate electrochemical or photochemical pathways.

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Human population growth impacts our health in a variety of ways including; the spread of infectious diseases, increasing nitrogen/carbon-dioxide emissions, and prospective food shortages. These challenges demand smart and innovative use of biological systems and the development of novel sustainable technology. In this session, divergent topics in biotechnology will be addressed evolving around the detection of viruses (TNO), alternative food production (Mosa Meat BV) and the use of biocatalysis in chemical synthesis (Aminoverse BV).

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Nanomaterials come with a wide range of functionalities which enable them to be important contributors to the transition of the built environment towards climate neutrality. Especially their interaction with sunlight via selective transmission and blocking of certain wavelength regions or via excitation and creation of electron-hole-pairs can be used in novel energy-efficient windows and solar panels. Advanced and smart functionalities in nanomaterials and coatings can be used to further optimize the usage of solar heat in buildings and to increase on-site solar energy harvesting. In this session, we focus on novel technologies using nanomaterials in smart energy efficient windows and improved solar panels. The nanomaterials implemented in coatings, polymer films or photovoltaic absorber layers add smart solar heat management to windows, reduce operating temperatures in solar panels or enable record solar cell efficiencies.

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Down-stream processing of chemical production is a large contributor to energy use in the industry (40-80% of all energy use for a chemical process). Innovative separation processes using membranes can reduce this energy use significant. The structuring and processing of these membranes on a nanoscale can change functionality and efficiencies.

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The coming decades we face a huge transition from fossil to renewable based economies using a wide variety of technologies. In this plenary lecture an energy based analysis is made to determine which chemical processes should be done where, which resources we should use, how we should perform these processes, and what the implications are for equipment, materials, and design.

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