Dr. Vladimir Popok, Associate Professor, Department of Physics and Nanotechnology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

Biography: Vladimir Popok received his master and PhD degrees from Belarusian State University (BSU) in 1990 and 1995, respectively. After that we worked at different positions at BSU, University of Gothenburg in Sweden and Rostock University in Germany. Since 2011 he is an Associate Professor at the Department of Physics and Nanotechnology, Aalborg University in Denmark. Main fields of research interest are related to cluster ion beams, optical and electronic properties of nanoparticles and metal/polymer nanocomposites as well as materials for power electronics. He published over 110 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 3 chapters in books and co-authored 2 books.

Speech Title: Polymer composite films with size-selected metal nanopartciles
Abstract: Polymer composite films with metal nanoparticles (NP) are of high interest for a number of applications. Recently, it has been demonstrated that cluster beam technique is an efficient method for embedment of NPs into polymer substrates. However, the mechanisms of cluster immersion into polymers are not well understood as well as electronic and optical properties of the embedded metal NPs require deeper study. In the current work, silver and copper cluster are produced using the magnetron sputtering cluster apparatus. They are size-selected and deposited on poly(methyl methacrylate) and polystyrene films prepared by spin-coating. The experiments have shown that immersion of soft-landed NPs into polymers can be driven by thermal annealing. This technically simple treatment opens great capabilities for the formation of polymer films with either partly or fully embedded size-selected particles as well as formation of the composites with controlled filling factor of NPs. The developed methodologies are grounded by physical understanding of main mechanisms driving NP immersion. Optical properties of polymer composites with embedded metal NPs are studied and discussed in the paper.
Keywords: Cluster beam technique; Metal nanoparticles, Composite polymer films; Localised surface plasmon resonance.