Université de Strasbourg

Paolo Samorì – MRS Fellow and new breakthroughs in (opto)electronics and civil engineering

08 June 2021

Paolo Samorì, 2020 USIAS Fellow and director of the Institute of Supramolecular Science and Engineering (ISIS) is the first researcher from the University of Strasbourg to be appointed as Fellow of the Materials Research Society (MRS) in 2021. His team and collaborators have also published recent research on boosting the performance of electronic devices in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. His recently-launched USIAS project on 2D materials-based cementitious composites for multifunctional civil engineering applications (SOCIO) has already shown how the chemical approach is the key to achieving high performance, as published in the journals Advanced Functional Materials and ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

 

The Materials Research Society (MRS) was founded nearly 50 years ago in the United States, and has over 11,000 members from industry, academia and national laboratories. Its goal is to embrace and cultivate diversity, and use it as a resource for a dynamic and vibrant future. The prestigious distinction of MRS Fellow was awarded to Professor Samorì “for highly significant contributions to the advancement of materials science by developing novel high-performance multifunctional materials and devices for technologically relevant applications in (opto)electronics, energy and sensing”.

 

In collaboration with researchers from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and the University of Cambridge (UK), Paolo Samorì’s team from the Nanochemistry Laboratory have devised a simple yet effective new molecular strategy to boost the performance of electronic devices based on semiconducting 2D materials. Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD) offer a wide range of electronic, optical and mechanical properties.

 

2D materials-based cementitious composites for multifunctional civil engineering applications (SOCIO), the USIAS project coordinated by Paolo Samorì, has already resulted in the publication of two other major papers in high-ranking international journals:

  • In Advanced Functional Materials - “Graphene-Based Cementitious Composites: Toward Next-Generation Construction Technologies In ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces”, a comprehensive review article on graphene-based cement composites towards the construction of smart and multifunctional buildings as well as structural health monitoring applications (Adv. Funct. Mater., 2021, in press; DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202101887)
  • In ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces – “Electrochemically Exfoliated Graphene for High-Durability Cement Composites”, in collaboration with the Silesian University of Technology (Poland), a research article on the development of highly durable graphene-based cement composites for structural applications (ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 2021, 13, 23000–23010; DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c04451).

These results represent an important step towards the practical application of nanomaterials in the field of civil engineering.

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