Projects

The coherent, monochromatic and intense light of a laser opened the way to research in nonlinear optics, the field in which this doctoral research is situated. Nonlinear optical (NLO) materials are able to alter the color of light, switch it or change its transmission characteristics, depending on its intensity. The technological applications of such nonlinear optical interactions are myriad. After introducing the general aspects of ...

The orientation and conformation of molecules are of great interest in the fields of chemistry and industry, and also in our everyday lives. They impact several properties of molecules and often define whether they are suitable for a given application or not. In this thesis, we studied the effects of the molecular conformation by coherent second-harmonic generation (SHG) and the orientation of molecules on surfaces and in solution by coherent ...

The formation of self-assembled molecular networks (SAMNs) is an important strategy to nanostructure surfaces. While most studies have focused on monocomponent systems, the real power of this self-assembly approach is its potential to form complex multifunctional patterns, involving the use of multiple molecular systems at once. An additional level of control, and complexity, is offered by the formation of multilayer systems. In this PhD ...

Living tissues are more than packed cells. In fact, much of a tissue's volume is made up of extracellular space, filled with a complex meshwork of sugars, water, minerals and proteins called the extracellular matrix (ECM). Cells contain special structures called focal adhesions, the ‘fingers’ of the cell, which probe the surrounding matrix and neighboring cells. Depending on what they feel, cells will adapt their shape, size and structure in ...

Perovskites have garnered intensive interest because of their extraordinary properties for photovoltaic applications. In the last years, the maximum obtained efficiency of perovskite absorbers for this application has risen substantially, up to a maximum of 23%, thereby rapidly closing the gap with the efficiency of more traditional photovoltaic materials. The further development of these perovskites for photovoltaic applications is, however, ...

This research focuses on using chirality as a tool to study different aspects of supramolecular self-assembly of molecular building blocks on the highly ordered pyrolytic graphic (HOPG), at the liquid-solid interface. A well-known class of molecules in the field of supramolecular assembly on surfaces, alkoxylated dehydrobenzo[12]annulene (DBA) derivatives, are selected as the objects of study, as in addition to the vast amount of information ...

The objective is to contribute to the understanding and control of polymorphism in 2D materials and monolayer thin organic films on 2D materials. By a combination of non-covalent and covalent molecular functionalization protocols, and using state of the art characterization tools, this project aims to (1) spatially modulate the phase behavior of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) to modulate their optical or electronic properties and (2) ...