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Colloidal supraparticles promise exciting applications. But are they mechanically stable enough to deliver these promises? We investigate the mechanics of colloidal supraparticles under compression. We find a scaling relationship between the supraparticle geometry and its fracture, and how the fracture is influenced by interparticle adhesion. Many thanks for Benoit Merle, Prof. Peukert, Andi Ströbel, Jan Schwenger and the coauthors for the great collaboration! Image credit: Jan Schwenger. 

A new paper by our PhD student Yara was just published in ACS Omega! In this work, we showed how hierarchical surface roughness can enhance the stability of a ionic liquid film on top of a surface. You can find the complete paper here.  

Yesterday Herbert successfully defended his PhD thesis, becoming the second PhD graduate from the Vogel Group. Congratulations!

A chiral plasmonics review? Don´t panic, we have you covered! In our review, we discuss mostly harmless theory, as well as the design and fabrication of large-area chiral plasmonic substrates. We hope this more tutorial-style review provides easy access to the complex field, and brings chiral plasmonics closer to applications and multidisciplinary research. Please find our review in Advanced Optical Materials at https://doi.org/10.1002/adom.202100378This review was a great collaborative effort between Lisa Poulikakos´ lab and the Vogel lab – thank you all very much for this great opportunity.Here is the toc… Read More »Eric review

Together with Fedja Wendisch and Gilles R. Bourret we fabricated anisotropic Si nanowire arrays over large areas. The pallet of the possible cross-sections was extended to elliptical and crescent-shaped wires using MACE and colloidal lithography. Controlled bundling occurs, leading to anisotropic surface topographies. Find our just accepted paper in Nanoscale Advances.

A new paper by our PhD student Salvatore was just accepted in Advanced Materials Interfaces! In this work, we showed how repellent liquid-infused surfaces can adhere to various substrates via mussel-inspired chemistry. You can find the full paper here.

Teresa showed her research project “Auf Rutschpartie mit der Kannenpflanze” to interested young female students and answered questions about being a female scientist in engineering at the Girls Day of Bionicum Nürnberg today.

Salvatore and Teresa presented their research on the Baybionik project “Auf Rutschpartie mit der Kannenpflanze” at the “Ideenforum Bionicum” last week. You can watch the virtual event on YouTube.  

New paper by Johannes about the phase behavior of binary microgel mixtures has been accepted in Soft Matter  

Eric won a prize for his contributed talk about ‘Chiral Surface Lattice Resonances’ in this year’s nanoGe spring meeting (#NSM21). The symposium about self-organization at all scales (#SELFNC21) took place on the 11th and 12th of March, this year online due to given circumstances. Congratulations Eric!

We are proud to announce that Nicolas received the “Best lecturer” award from the MAP students during the annual MAP poster session. Thanks to all the students for the engagement during the semester and during the event!

The Vogel lab celebrated the new year 2021 with a digital zoom party. It was a fun evening with games and quizes and we hope that everyone enjoyed it. We are all impatiently looking forward to a real, in-person party in this year and hope that life will normalize eventually! Untill then, please all stay healthy!  

We are pleased to announce that Eric was elected as the vice president of “SPIE student chapter” at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg. SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, was founded in 1955 to advance light-based technologies. Serving 255,000 constituents from 183 countries, the not-for-profit society advances emerging technologies through interdisciplinary information exchange, continuing education, publications, patent precedent, and career and professional growth. For more information please visit  SPIE official website. Congratulations Eric!

Nicolas presents a seminar with the title “Tailoring structural coloration in self-assembled materials” as a part of the lecture series „Soft Interface Seminar“ organized by our Japanese colleagues Prof. Takahara-sensei, Prof. Yusa-sensei, Prof. Sakai-sensei and Prof. Fujii-sensei. The seminar will take place on Friday, December 18, 2020 at 17:30-19:00 (JST) (9.30 CET). The seminar is online via zoom. In order to register and attend the seminar, please follow this link.

2020 Virtual MRS session: Lessons from nature: from biology to bioinspired materials featuring members of the Aizenberg family. For nearly 50 years, researchers from around the world have converged in Boston for the preeminent materials event of the year—the MRS Fall Meeting. Due to COVID-19, this year’s meeting is being held virtually. Nicolas is one of the organizers of the symposium: Lessons from nature- from biology to bioinspired materials, featuring members of the Aizenberg family. For more details, visit the official page of the symposium please.

It was about time to update our group photo. Due to the current restrictions of the covid pandemic, our meetings are currently virtual. We all hope that we will be able to meet in person again soonish. Untill then stay healthy and positive! Do not forget to smile! 🙂 

Our alumnus Tobias was featured in the last week’s edition of the well-known German economics magazine “Wirtschaftswoche” together with his brother. They have founded the company Atlas Aero GmbH in summer 2019 and are developing a personal hybrid airplane called Origin – a flying car so to say, also known as “electrical vertical take-off and landing” (eVTOL) aircraft. With a range of 1500km and a travel speed of 300kph while using only as much fuel as a smart car, they are first building a better alternative to small helicopters on… Read More »Tobis Startup

In the summer semester 2020, different departments of the university launched the „Publikumspreis für exzellente Lehre“ (Audience Award for Excellent Teaching). All students of the Department of Chemical and Biological engineering had the opportunity to nominate lecturers who have distinguished themselves through particularly good teaching and innovative solution to the digitalized semester. The lecture  „Grenzflächen in der Verfahrenstechnik“ (“Interfaces in Process Engineering”) by Prof. Nicolas Vogel was selected as the top choice one from the 70 nominations that students submitted. The lecture was recorded and is available on Youtube, while… Read More »Publikumspreis für exzellente Lehre

Prof. Vogel and his team introduce research topics of the group. We see how biological functionalities such as the self-cleaning surfaces of plants or the shining colors of animals can be reproduced in the lab by controlling the structure of materials using self-assembly processes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkn_hyMjibw

Nicolas is presenting in the Particle-Based Materials Symposium 2020. The Particle-Based Material Symposium is a small workshop (50-100 participants) that has, in the last 4 years, brought together (mainly) young scientists and engineers from different communities that all share the goal of creating functionality in materials using particles. This year, a strong focus will be on applications of particle-based materials and on the extension of our Network over Europe and the World. Like many other scientific conferences, the PBM Symposium, which has been held annually at different research locations in… Read More »Nicolas presents in Particle-Based Materials Symposium 2020