Seminars at the accelerator: Célia Tavares de Sousa

Speaker: Célia Tavares de Sousa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Dpto. Física Aplicada, Madrid, Spain

Title: Nanofabrication of advanced materials for biomedical and energy applications

Abstract: The great advances in nanoscience and nanotechnology in the last decade have led to the development of new platforms where all physical properties like size, porosity, geometry and surface functionalization can be controlled at the nanoscale. Self-organized nanostructuring using template synthesis is a very promising and rapidly expanding field for the preparation of templates and many different ordered nanostructures ranging from the micrometer to few nm range. Porous Anodic Aluminum, Titanium, Iron or Hafnium templates with self-organized structures have been shown suitable not only as a well-controlled nanostructured material for direct applications but also as a template for preparing two- or three-dimensional arrays of periodic nanostructures [1].

This talk will be focused in the recent advances in the fabrication of nanoporous templates by anodic oxidation of Al, Ti, Fe and Hf metal substrates. Synthesized TiO2, and alpha-Fe2O3 nanotube arrays after converted in semiconductors are directly used as photoanodes in dye-sensitized and photoelectrochemical cells, respectively [2]. Also arrays of alpha-Fe2O3 nanowires were fabricated by hydrothermal method [3]. Several characterization techniques were used to study the influence of the fabrication techniques, experimental parameters and annealing conditions in the photoanodes performance. Amorphous Al2O3 were used for template assisted growth of nanowires and nanotubes for biomedical applications. The magnetic properties of iron nanowires were studied in detail to found the vortex-state for magneto-mechanical cell death applications [4, 5]. Cell viability and uptake assays were performed in MDA-MB231 cells. Several concentrations of nanostructures were studied by flow cytometry. As a result, the nanostructures were internalized by the cells and found to be innocuous to them, in the absence of an external magnetic field

  • 1. Sousa, C.T., et al., Nanoporous alumina as templates for multifunctional applications. Applied Physics Reviews, 2014. 1(3): p. 031102.
  • 2. Apolinário, A., et al., Modeling the Growth Kinetics of Anodic TiO2 Nanotubes. The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, 2015. 6(5): p. 845-851.
  • 3. Quitério, P., et al., Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting: Thermal Annealing Challenges on Hematite Nanowires. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 2020. 124(24): p. 12897-12911.
  • 4. Peixoto, L., et al., Magnetic nanostructures for emerging biomedical applications. Applied Physics Reviews, 2020. 7(1): p. 011310.
  • 5. Caspani, S., et al., The Magnetic Properties of Fe/Cu Multilayered Nanowires: The Role of the Number of Fe Layers and Their Thickness. Nanomaterials (Basel), 2021. 11(10).

The seminar will take place at CMAM meeting room but it can also be followed virtually through Ms Teams

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