Program – Nanotechnology Crossing Borders 2025

In the process of increasing the energy efficiency of buildings, most building components require optimization to minimize interaction with the outside environment. Buildings are made air-tight, and the insulation of walls, roofs, and floors is further increased to realize a static indoor climate. The part of the building skin for which interaction with the outside is still desired, are windows. For windows, capturing natural light and solar heat is desired to a certain extent. In many climate regions a building’s demands on sunlight and solar heat transmission change during the day and between the seasons, which can be accommodated by so-called smart windows. In this session, we focus on the development of materials for smart windows, and their functional performance. Furthermore, we address the potential for re-using window glass at the end of the window’s life time, and the corresponding technical and materials challenges.

This session explores how biofabrication is being used to develop new materials and systems by working directly with living cells and organisms. With applications ranging from food to healthcare and sustainable design, the talks highlight how biological processes are being harnessed to create practical solutions. In this session, we focus on the development of cultivated meat, offering a glimpse into more ethical and sustainable food production, development of 3D cardiac models, showing how engineered heart tissue can support advances in models of disease, and bacterial biodesign, where microbes are used to create advanced materials that respond to their environment.

This session explores strategies to use light as an energy source for the production of chemicals. The sun and green electricity-fuelled light sources might in the future be used to produce chemicals in a sustainable and economic fashion. Emphasis will be placed on equipment, system design, efficiency optimization, and the role of materials science in enabling scalable solar chemical technologies. In this session, we focus on advanced light sources for photochemistry, production of methanol using (sun)light and integrating sunlight harvesting with hydrogen production.

SolarNL is a thriving ecosystem that elevates the Dutch solar PV industry to new levels of innovation and economic impact. Building on our well-established solar industry, SolarNL unites leading PV scientists through SolarLab, fostering close collaboration with industry experts. This unique partnership ensures that scientific discoveries are shaped by real-world manufacturing needs, while innovative research simultaneously drives advancements in production technologies. The Solar NL project is a National Growth Fund project and will run to 2030. In this workshop three institutes/companies will tell about their activities in the Solar NL project relating innovative Solar products