News Archive
June 21, 2018 - Editors' Suggestion
Our paper entitled 'Theory of Water Desalination with Intercalation Materials' [doi] has been highlighted by the editors of Phys. Rev. Applied. [link]
April 19, 2018 - Pt Nanoparticles in Porous Organic Frameworks
Today Nanoscale published our on affinity layers for methanol vapours that consist of porous organic frameworks and in-situ prepared platinum nanoparticles.
Feb 6, 2018 - NWO Start-up Grant Awarded
Our group received an NWO Start-up subsidy to start working on covalent organic frameworks (COFs) for gas sensing purposes. Two PhD positions will become available soon. See also: NWO (UK or in Dutch), Resource (Dutch only; English version will follow soon).
Jan 9, 2018 - PhD Defense of Anping Cao
Today Anping succesfully defended her PhD thesis on chemical sensors made from silicon nanowires on gas sensing using different surface modification strategies. Congrats! Full focus now on your postdoc project with Prof Dick Broer at TU Eindhoven, good luck! [link to thesis]
October 23, 2017 - Welcome
Kaustub Singh (Delft University of Technology) joined our ERC team as a PhD student.Aug 2, 2017 - Covering Sensors with MOFs
Two front covers highlighting the MOF-based sensors work of Sumit in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces [doi] 
and Small [doi].
July 4, 2017 Phosphate Adsorption at Alkaline Conditions
The work of Laura and Min exploring a guanidinium-functionalized polyelectrolyte for phosphate binding using coated Fe3O4 nanoparticles will appear in J. Mater. Chem. A [doi] next month.
July 3, 2017 - Welcome
Sevil Şahin joined our group as a PhD student.April 27, 2017 - Paper Celebrations
April has been a productive month: two of Sumit's thesis chapters on MOF-based sensors have been accepted for publication in Small and ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces this month. And also congrats to Lukasz: his work on ion transfer voltammetry of several drug molecules involved in neurotransmission blockage will appear in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry soon.
March 27, 2017 - PhD Defense of Sumit Sachdeva
It is Dr Sachdeva now! Sumit succesfully defended his PhD thesis on gas sensing with MOF-based capacitive sensors. Congrats! [link to thesis]
March 10, 2017 - WYA Membership
Louis de Smet and five other researchers from Wageningen University were elected to the Wageningen Young Academy. [link]
March 9, 2017 - Phosphate: too little and too much
Resource, the magazine of Wageningen University, addresses the dilemma of phosphate and gives an overview of several approaches on the recovery of phosphate currently explored in The Netherlands (NL version, UK version).
January 11, 2017 - Cover Nano Letters
Our recent paper on nanowire-based sensors for the detection of TNT has reached the cover of the first 2017 issue of Nano Letters.
December 8, 2016 - Poster Prize Laura @ IMSTEC 2016
Laura Paltrinieri won the Best Poster Presentation Prize for her contribution on 'Phosphate transport through anion exchange membranes: effect of salt concentration and type of co-ion' at the 9th International Membrane Science and Technology Conference in Adelaide, Australia. Congrats Laura!
November 24, 2016 - E-motion Started!
This month the ERC Consolidator program on the Electro-motion for the recovery of nutrients started. Nathalja Berghuis started as a PhD student. See also the WUR magazine, Resource (English or Dutch) and Waterforum.
November 9, 2016 - MOPs for TNT Sensing
Our latest paper appeared online today in Nano Letters. [doi] The work describes nanowire-based sensors which can detect trace amounts of TNT, an explosive compound, by using a lantern-type cage structure. These so-called metal−organic polyhedra (MOPs) act as a host for TNT. The work was performed in close collaboration with the University of Twente, Philips Research, the City University of Hong Kong and the University of Melbourne. Congrats to first authors Anping and Wei!
See also TU_Delft, Delta, University_of_Twente, Engineering.com and the following news items in Dutch: C2W_Magazine, C2W_online, Kennislink, TU_Delft, University_of_Twente and UTNieuws.
November 1, 2016 - Diamond Surfaces Analyzed by XPS
A recently published application note from Thermo Scientific on using X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy to confirm the reversible hydrogenation of diamond films is based our work published in J. Chem. Phys. 2013, 138, 234707. [doi]
September 14, 2016 - MOF/Polymer Films for Gas Sensing
Sumit's manuscript on polymer-MOF composite films as an affinity layer for capacitive sensor devices has been accepted for publication as a Letter in ACS Sensors. [doi]
August 1, 2016 - Start @ Wageningen University
After 9 years in Delft, I moved to Wageningen University to join the Laboratory_of_Organic Chemistry. While continuing my sensor activities, I will start a new group on organic materials research in the field of ion selectiviy and ion recovery. Thanks to Ernst and other ChemE staff for the great time at TU Delft!
May 31, 2016 - Inside Cover
Our collaborative work with the Gascon group has been published in CrystEngCommun. The work is on the electrochemical synthesis of a copper-based metal–organic framework directly onto supported copper surfaces and is highlighted as an Inside Front Cover [doi]. Congrats to Sumit and Alexey!
May 19, 2016 - Lab Relocation
We moved to a brand new building of the Faculty of Applied Sciences down south the campus of TU Delft.
January 15, 2016 - Immersing Capacitive Sensors in Water
Today a guest contribution of Louis to Sensors Magazine - Insights appeared online. The article highlights the PhD work of Judith Staginus on the capacitive detection of organic compounds in water.
December 2015 - ERC Consolidator Grant
An ERC Consolidator Grant of 2 M€ was awarded to Louis de Smet for research into the design, preparation and characterization of ultrathin coatings for the recovery of specific ions from waste water. More info and news items via these links: ERC, Horizon2020, TUDelft, Delta (news), Wetsus, and in Dutch: 3TU, Delta (highlight), NWO, Waterforum and DuurzaamBedrijfsleven.nl.
December 2015 - Young Scientist Award GAMS 2015
Louis' presentation 'Functionalized Polyelectrolytes as Versatile Building Blocks' at the Global Advanced Materials & Surfaces Forum 2015 in Dubai was awarded with the Young Scientist Award. The talk covered our recent publications in Optics Express 2014, Anal. Methods 2015 (back cover online now) and Soft Matter 2016.
December 2015 - Review on Organic Solvent Nanofiltration
Congrats to Mohammad on his review paper, that will appear in Chemical Engineering Journal early 2016! We wrote this work together with Dr Sadrzadeh from the University of Alberta.
November 2015 - Multilayered Phosphate Sponge
Zheng's manuscript on 'The effect of guanidinium functionalization on the structural properties and anion affinity of polyelectrolyte multilayers' has been accepted for publication in Soft Matter. We show that the presence of guanidinium in a multilayers results in an enchanced absorbance of phosphate ions. [doi]
October 17, 2015 - Demonstration at Primary School
Today Louis gave a little scientific demonstration at the primary school of his oldest son, together with another enthusiastic father, a physicist. All related to the theme of the Children's Book Week: ''strange but true'. Some optics, static balloons and we used a frozen banana ase w a hammer to drive a nail. Cool stuff!
September 2015 - Water-enhanced Guarding
Judith's manuscript entitled 'Water-enhanced guarding of polymer-coated IDE platforms as a key mechanism for achieving response immunity towards parasitic coupling events' has been accepted for publication in Sensors & Actuators A: Physical.
May 2015 - Lectures on Functionalized Polyelectrolytes
This month Louis gave three presentations on functionalized polyelectrolytes at the Wetsus Workshop on Resource Recovery in Leeuwarden, the E-MRS Spring Meeting in Lille and IACIS 2015 in Mainz.
February 2015 - Hat Trick!
Over the last months, three PhD research proposals on functional polymer thin films for sensitive and selective sensors and membrane separations were granted. The total budget of the grants, provided by Wetsus and Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, is nearly 1 M€.
December 9, 2014 - Ion-selective membranes
A manuscript from Anping Cao and Marleen Mescher on ion-selective membranes for sensor purposes using two different transducer platforms has been accepted for publication in Analytical Chemistry [doi].
November 3, 2014 - Bottom-up Nanotechnology
Prof. Ernst Sudhölter wrote a contribution for the TG Magazine on Bottom-up nanotechnology at Organic Materials & Interface by summarizing our recent PCCP paper [doi].
October 27, 2014 - Poster Prize Holst Centre
Congrats to our collaborator Marcel Zevenbergen from the Holst Centre who won the 2nd price at NanoCity 2014 with his Holst-TUD poster, entitled "Miniaturized ion sensor for fluid analysis".
September 29, 2014 - Teflon Reinforces Palladium
C2W Life Sciences highlighted our recent article in Angew. Chem. Int. Edit. [doi] online as well as in their biweekly magazine (Dutch only).
July 17, 2014 - PCCP
In our recent Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics paper we present the amino functionalization by electrochemical reduction of electrografted bromo and nitro azobenzene layers bound to Si(111) surfaces.
June 26, 2014 - AFM Force Study
Our AFM force spectroscopy of the interaction between CD44-IgG-Fusion protein and the polysaccharide hyaluronan will appear in BioNanoScience. This work has been performed in collaboration with Leiden University. [doi]
June 17, 2014 - Optics Express
Together with TNO we work on the (bio)sensing applications of optical microring resonators. Our first paper appeared in Optics Express and focusses on layer-by-layer multilayers and protein detection. [doi]
June 11, 2014 - Contactless Photoconductance Study on NCD
Our manuscript covering a contactless photoconductance study on undoped and doped nanocrystalline diamond (NCD) films has been accepted for publication in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. [link]
May 24, 2014 - Minilab
An article on the continuous analysis with sensors with contributions from Holst Centre, TU Eindhoven and our group appeared in C2W Life Sciences.
May 19, 2014 - Lab of... Organic Materials and Interfaces
Our lab was featured on the back cover of the university magazine Delta. Anping and Aldo tell more about our research on silicon nanowires. [link]
January 29, 2014 - Back Gate versus Front Gate
A paper on the electrical response of top-down, p-type silicon nanowire field-effect transistors exposed to water and mixtures of water and dioxane has been published online today in Sensors. [link]
December 24, 2013 - Review on Gas-Phase Sensors
Our review on 'Silicon Nanowire-Based Devices for Gas-Phase Sensing' has been published online today. [link]
August 6, 2013 - Cover
Our paper made the cover of Macromolecular Materials and Engineering, issued on August 6, 2013.
May 30, 2013 - Hydrogenation of CVD Diamond Films
A manuscript on a new method to hydrogenate CVD diamond films by high- temperature annealing at atmospheric pressure has been accepted for publication in The Journal of Chemical Physics. This work is the result of a collaboration with the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience (TU Delft), Hasselt University (Belgium) and Thermo Fisher Scientific (UK) and has recently also been presented at the Hasselt Diamond Workshop 2013.
April 10, 2013 - Immersed IDEs
A manuscript on the capacitive response of polymer-covered Interdigited Electrodes (IDEs) on the presence of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) has been accepted for publication in Sensors & Actuators, B: Chemical. [doi] This work has also been presented at the 2nd European Congress of Applied Biotechnology on April 24.
March 18, 2013 - Simple and Robust Device Processing
A manuscript from our collaborative work with Philips Research on a robust fabrication method for SiNW-based FETs has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.
October 31, 2012 - Polymer Aerogels
Our manuscript on the preparation of Matrimid aerogels has been accepted for publication in Macromolecular Materials and Engineering.
October 22, 2012 - Hybrid Diamond/Graphite Nanogaps
A manuscript from our collaborative work on diamond films with Hasselt University (Belgium) has been accepted for publication in Applied Physics Letters. We report on the use of a high-current annealing technique to fabricate nanogaps and hybrid diamond/graphite structures in boron-doped nanocrystalline diamond films. The nanometer-sized gaps (~1 nm) are characterized using scanning electron microscopy, electronic transport measurements and Raman spectroscopy.
October 2012 - Program Delft Discussions on Soft Matter Finalized
On January 29, 2013 the Department of ChemE of Delft University of Technology organizes the third edition of Delft Discussions on Soft Matter Science and Technology. The registration is open as of now. List of invited speakers: Giuseppe Battaglia (University of Sheffield, UK), Annette Taylor (University of Leeds, UK), Janos Vörös (ETH Zürich, Swiss), Andy Cooper (University of Liverpool, UK), Vicki Stone (Heriot-Watt University, Scotland), Luis Liz-Marzán (University of Vigo, Spain).
July, 2012 - Biofunctionalized PDMS Microchannels
A manuscript from our collaborative work with Dr Ottens has been accepted for publication in Biochemical Engineering Journal. The paper reports an experimental protocol for protein immobilization on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) polymer surfaces and the subsequent application of a chromatographic PDMS microfluidic chip to measure protein–protein interactions. [doi]
April 11, 2012 - Electrical Sensing at 0.15 M
Our manuscript on the effect of the type of doping on the electrical characteristics of electrolyte-oxide-silicon sensors is online now. The work shows that charged molecules can be detected electrically at a salt concentration as high as 0.15 M. [doi]
April 2012 - Release Chapter on Fabrication of Nanowires
Our review chapter, entitled Fabrication of Nanowires for Biosensing Applications will be published late April in Nanodevices and Nanofabrication - Selected Publications from Symposium of Nanodevices and Nanofabrication in ICMAT2011, edited by Qing Zhang and W.I. Wilne.
December, 2011 - Announcement Delft Discussions on Soft Matter
On January 30, 2012 the Department of ChemE of Delft University of Technology organizes the second edition of Delft Discussions on Soft Matter Science and Technology.
October 18, 2011 - Kinetics of Polymer Degradation
Our study on the structure of hyaluronan during acid-catalyzed hydrolysis has been accepted for publication in Soft Matter. In this work we report a kinetic study of both polymer chain scission and polymer particle disaggregation. [doi]
July 25, 2011 - Nanowire Chapter Release + Interview
Our chapter on Organic Surface Modification of Silicon Nanowire-Based Sensor Devices has been released today. The review chapter is part of the Open Access InTech book, entitled Nanowires - Implementations and Applications, edited by Dr Hashim. See also my interview to InTech.
June 14, 2011 - Gas-born SiNPs
A manuscript of Vincent Vons, David Munao and Alper Evirgen on silicon nanoparticles produced by spark discharge has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research. [doi]
April 3, 2011 - Pulsed Gate Potential Method
Marleen Mescher's paper on a pulsed method for characterizing aqueous media using nanowire Field Effect Transistors has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transaction on Electron Devices. [doi]
March 23, 2011 - Plasma Front Analysis
The work of Michel Rosso on the reaction-diffusion analysis for one-step plasma etching and bonding of microfluidic devices has been accepted for publication in Applied Physics Letters. [doi]
March 16, 2011 - Random Scission of Polymers
A paper of Aernout Martens on numerical simulations and experiments on Hyaluronan hydrolosis has been accepted for publication in Macromolecules. [doi]
March 2, 2011 - XPS Proposal Granted
A ChemE proposal on the acquisition of an X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscope (XPS) has been granted by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) within the program of "Basic Equipment for Research Themes in Chemical Focus Areas (BAZIS). [link to NWO site]
November 2010 - Sulfonated Liquid Crystalline Polymers
Daniela Sordi's paper on nanocomposites has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Polymer Science Part A: Polymer Chemistry. [doi]