Education of young researchers is among priorities of our program group. Well over 10 students defended their PhD theses in past five years. Among them, we selected this particular one since the thesis was prepared within the agreement between a Slovenian and a French University. The defense was organized both at Jožef Stefan International postgraduate school in Ljubljana and Universite du Maine in Le Mans. A novel approach to handling with blood proteins – causers of neurodegenerative diseases has been invented and the methods disclosed in the thesis are suitable for application in medical praxis.
D.09 Tutoring for postgraduate students
COBISS.SI-ID: 258659584Our programe group often protects original methods or devices of high technological potential with patent applications. We have filed over 10 applications in last 5 years. Three patents have been granted by European or American patent offices, among them this one. Patent US 8247039 (B2) has been granted by United States Patent and Trademark Office on 21. avg. 2012 (the priority rights date back to 2005). The patent protects an original method based on plasma treatment of entire surface of a product made from a polymer and subsequent treatment with a collimated beam of energetic electrons causing local defunctionalization thus enable for arbitrary distribution of surface functional groups on micrometer scale.
F.09 Development of a new technological process or technology
COBISS.SI-ID: 20346407Members of program group were partners in over 10 EU projects in past 5 years. Only the following one is described below. In period 2008-2012 we succesfully collaborated in the European FP7 project "Atmospheric plasmas for nanoscale industrial surface processing PlasmaNice". In the project 15 European partners from research and industry areas were involved. The budget of the project was 5.9 millions EUR. The results of the PlasmaNice project are a new equipment and technology for industrial inline deposition of functional coatings on paper and plastic substrates for packaging assisted by atmospheric plasmas. Our group carried out precise surface characterization of plasma deposited solgel coatings using XPS, AFM and TOFSIMS methods. We determined the correlation between the plasma process parameters, degree of surface functionalization and thickness of the deposited coatings.
D.01 Chairing over/coordinating (international and national) projects
COBISS.SI-ID: 26578727The program group has developed various technologies and products nowadays used at by industrial partners. We selected the following one. In general, a decorative function of hard protective coatings is not important for the performance of the tool, however, the color of coating provides several advantages: (1) in the machining process, color of the tool indicates its wear; (2) it can be used to distinguish between the tools; (3) it has an aesthetic appearance and can be a recognizable brand for the tool manufacturer. We developed a protective/decorative coating in an industrialscale deposition system using standard hard coating materials. Color of the coating was obtained using the interference effect between the top layer of nanolayered AlTiN coating and the reflective layer. Since AlTiN is a semitransparent material in the visible range it does not cause significant shift in color with the angle of view and the color has a metallic appearance. In this way intense colors of blue, violet and green were produced by precisely controlling the thickness of the top layer – for this purpose a previously developed simulation of coating growth was used. Coatings were prepared on cutting tools of different geometries but can be applied to any application where decorative and protective functionality is required. For this achievement we were awarded in the international tooling fair Forma tool with the golden prize in the category »Tools, equipment, processes and services from tooling support activities«.
F.06 Development of a new product
COBISS.SI-ID: 24447271Members of program group gave over 50 invited lectures at international scientific conferences and workshops. They frequently serve as guest lecturers at prominent foreign universities. The programme leader gave lectures at the fourth largest American university. He introduced nonequilibrium gaseous plasma and emhasized methods for achievement extremely nonequilibrium oxygen plasma. Such plasma is suitable for treatment of various organic materials from composites used in electronic industry to biological cells and tissues. He also presented his recent patents granted worldwide from USA to Japan.
B.05 Guest lecturer at an institute/university
COBISS.SI-ID: 27360807