Materials NL Challenges grant awarded to Professor Loi

Professor Maria Antonietta Loi of the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials (ZIAM) has been awarded a Materials NL Changes grant by the NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research). The grant is worth EUR 1 million of which EUR 300,000 is contributed by the four companies participating in the consortium: Holst Centre, Quantum Solutions LLC, QDI Systems BV and Photonis BV. All other consortium partners are researchers within the Faculty of Science and Engineering.

Loi’s project, called MeMOE, will be developing a new artificial material for efficient and fast near-infrared photodetectors: OptoElectronic Metamaterials will be made of nanosized “Lego” pieces, the Quantum Dots, connected by molecular “glue”, the ligands. Full tuning of their properties will be achieved by varying the “Lego” pieces architecture and the “glue” quality.

In total, seven projects within the framework of the Materials NL Challenges programme were awarded, for a total of EUR 5 million.