NOMATEN - archive

The Center of Excellence has now become an actual center, with 5 research groups in action. The second year of our existence has been one of quick growth in spite of the global pandemic crisis, which has affected research very much. The lack of international mobility and exchanges has so to speak been substituted with hard work in the offices and laboratories. For NOMATEN, this is a well-working recipe as the steps to build up a real research environment do depend on the individual and joint effort of our staff.

We should also acknowledge the institutional support of the National Center for Nuclear Research, hosting us as an operationally independent department. Likewise, the Teaming partners CEA (France) and VTT (Finland) have been – however virtual – supportive and encouraging external “team members”. The CoE is firmly backed by the funding of the Foundation for Polish Science and is under the umbrella of an International Scientific Committee headed by prof. Sergio Bertolucci.

Commercially pure titanium (CP-Ti) is one of the most widely used metallic material for biomedical applications owing to its unique combination of relatively low stiffness, biocompatibility and high corrosion resistance in the body fluids.

At the end of the year we are happy to announce prof. Dierk Raabe from Max-Planck Institut für Eisenforschung as a special guest at our seminar! The topic of his presentation is "The Materials Science of Sustainable Metallurgy".

NOMATEN is looking for talented scientists in the areas of corrosion, advanced multifunctional materials science and novel radiopharmaceuticals.

Tungsten is a promising candidate material for the wall of a future fusion reactor due to its low erosion yield and low hydrogen solubility. However, fusion neutron irradiation will induce radiation defects in the material which can strongly increase hydrogen retention. Therefore, it is important to study the mechanism of defect creation and its influence on hydrogen retention in tungsten.

About 50 scientists from Poland, Finland and France attended NOMATEN Winter School hosted by CEA in Paris on November 16-19. While sessions have been hosted at the venue in the centre of Paris, School's attendees visited CEA-Saclay Nuclear Centre infrastructure at the last day of the event. The topic of this year's school was "Modelling of the materials behaviour under irradiation".

Filip Tuomisto from University of Helsinki will give a presentation on studying high entropy alloys with positron annihilation spectroscopy, opportunities and challenges.

On November 9 2021 Ms Gabriela Kramer-Marek PhD from the Institute of Cancer Research (UK) will give a lecture on targeted molecular imaging: the path to smarter patient stratification and personalized treatment

NOMATEN received two crucial research devices in 2021 – the X-Ray Diffractometer and Scanning Electron Microscope that help Materials Characterization and Functional Properties of Materials groups perform their research. 

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is a powerful and versatile tool for characterizing materials at the micro- and nanoscale. Its strength lies in its sub-nanometer resolution and the possibility of detecting multiple, complementary signals simultaneously from the same region. Elisabeth Thronsen, Department of Physics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).