Job Offers
Research Areas
We are looking for motivated students, PhD students and scientists in the following research areas:
- Modeling polymer materials (Quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics, FEM)
- Synthesis and design of electroactive polymer materials and actuators.
- Physical and chemical characterization of polymer materials.
- Cyclic flow-electrode capacitor development
- Electromechanical characterization and validation of electroactive polymer actuators and sensors.
- Electromecahnical modelling of EAP materials (FEM, Electromechanicalmodels)
- Radiation damage of materials
- Biologially inspired robotics
- Image processing
- Applications of robotics
Positions
Euraxess Offers
PhD student position in Multi-scale modelling of conductive polymer based electromechanically...
- Organization
- IMS Lab, University of Tartu
- Research Field
- Chemistry › Computational chemistry, Chemistry › Physical chemistry, Computer science › Modelling tools, Engineering › Materials engineering, Engineering › Simulation engineering, Mathematics › Algorithms, Mathematics › Applied mathematics, Physics › Computational physics, Technology › Materials technology
- Researcher Profile
- First Stage Researcher (R1)
- Deadline
- 21/02/2020 21:00 - Europe/Athens
- Location
- Estonia
- Type Of Contract
- Temporary
- Hours Per Week
- 40
- Job Status
- Full-time
- Requirements
- Languages
- ENGLISH: GoodSee the offer on Euraxess website.
Environment:
Intelligent Materials and Systems Laboratory is an interdisciplinary research group established in 2003 in University of Tartu, Institute of Technology. Our goal is, by bringing together knowledge from diverse fields of expertise, to develop new materials and their control and applications. Exploitation of innovative materials will in turn permit building devices, different and in many ways superior to conventional machines. The scientific background of our staff as well as the laboratory equipment permits research activities on the borderline of computational material science, material science, robotics, chemistry, computer science and electronics.
Project Background: Electroactive polymers (EAP) consist of materials capable of changing dimensions and/or shape in response to electrical stimuli. Most EAPs are also capable of generating electrical energy in response to applied mechanical forces. Therefore, they have potential as sensors. These polymeric materials exhibit properties well beyond what conventional metal or plastic-based actuators can offer, including very high mechanical flexibility (can be stretched to twice their initial size), low density, a high grade of processability, scalability, microfabrication readiness and, in most cases, low cost. Micro-EAPs enable a new broad range of applications for which large strains and forces are desirable, and for which built-in intelligence is necessary. One type of EAPs are ionic EAP (IEAP). They rely on ion and solvent transport to cause volume changes of the polymeric phase. When an electric field is applied to the device, it drives the motion of these ions and the entrained solvent, leading to swelling or contraction when these ions enter or leave regions of the polymer. IEAPs including Conducting Polymers (CP), present several advantages, including the capability of large bending deformation even at low (~1%) intrinsic strains of the electroactive layer; low voltages operation (0.3-5V), that make them well suited for several applications especially interfacing with biology. These materials have intrinsic capability to be also electrochemical and mechanical sensors, which also allows to design self-sensing transducers in some cases.
Objective:
The main objectives are to realize a multiscale physics model to develop model for conductive polymer based actuators based on physical and electrochemical principles. It involves to develop polarizable force filed for atom-atom interaction based simulation models (Molecular dynamics and kinetics) with further integration if output parameters into Finite element analyses computations. The final result is reasonable physics and electrochemistry based model which is enable to give predictive results for electrochemomechanical transducer behavior.
Key words: Conductive polymers, Electroactive polymer composites, Electrochemistry, Computational materials science, Ab initio, Density Functional Theory, Polarizable force field, molecular dynamics, Finite element analyze, multiscale physics
Subject Areas: computational materials science, electrochemistry, electroactive polymer materials