New FUnctionalities through Structural Engineering and understanding of ultrastable GLASSes (FUSE-Glass)
- Funding agency: Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Ministerio de ciencia, innovación y Universidades, Gobierno de España). Ref. PID2023-147645NB-I00
- Awarded amount: 187.5 k€
- Project duration: 3 years (2024-2027)
- Principal investigator: Dr. M. Gonzalez-Silveira
Despite the ubiquity of glasses in our daily lives and their technological relevance, their nature is still unclear and fundamental questions about the physics governing the glass transition remain unanswered. FUSE-Glass aims to address this problem by experimentally analyzing the glass transition in molecular glasses using unconventional approaches, combining glasses deposited by thermal evaporation and formed from liquid cooling, and with new characterization tools and protocols developed in the Group of Thermal Properties of Nanoscale Materials (GTNaM), which has already demonstrated excellent national and international leadership in this area. FUSE-Glass not only addresses fundamental questions, but also aims to advance on the relevance of ultra-stable glasses towards possible applications through glass state manipulation, based on the hypothesis that defects or nanosegregation combined with the unusual properties of ultrastable glasses can be used to locally manipulate glass properties. Dipole inversion in nanostructured glasses at the local level could be used, for example, to fabricate neuromorphic memories. Nanosegregation, if successful, may pave the way for more efficient and durable solar cells. Defect engineering may represent a new, non-lithographic approach to functionalize organic surfaces in optical applications, from more efficient organic light-emitting diodes to nonlinear optical devices or diffusive surfaces.