Kroese-Duijsters Symposium 2024

The Kroese-Duijsters Symposia aim to provide researchers from different fields and different career stages to meet in an informal setting, to stimulate discussions and to start new collaborations. The Kroese-Duijsters Symposia started in 2022 and we are pleased to invite you to the 3rd Kroese-Duijsters Symposium on October 24 and 25 in the Gorlaeus Building, room BM1.23 at Leiden University.

The theme of the symposium is:

“2-dimensional materials: from graphene and graphene-like materials to transition metal dichalcogenides and 2D oxides”

Since the discovery of graphene by Novoselov and Geim in 2004, awarded with the Nobel prize in 2010, scientists have been speculating about the possible applications of this “wonder material”. The mechanical and thermal stability of graphene, and its extremely high electron mobility, make this material very suitable for applications in, for example, new field effect transistors, flexible electronics, high-strength/light-weight materials, and (bio)sensors. Despite these promises, graphene is currently not in use on a large and commercial scale. It turned out that growing “perfect” graphene, without defects, single-crystalline, and single-layer on a wafer scale, is challenging. The most-used method is currently growing graphene via chemical vapor deposition on e.g. a copper catalyst using methane as the precursor. Even though large steps have been taken to improve the growth of graphene with desired properties, the community is not there yet.

The discovery of graphene was the starting point for an entirely new, but still booming research field, of 2-dimensional materials (2DMs). Other materials than graphene, that also consist of single layers of atoms bound with strong covalent forces within the layer, but bound with weak van der Waals forces between the layers, turned out to be of interest as well. Examples are the class of graphene-like materials, such as borophene (atomic layer of boron), silicene (atomic layer of silicon), or hexagonal boron-nitride, the class of metal oxides, such as platinum or iron oxide, and the class of transition metal dichalcogenides, such as molybdenum sulfide or tungsten selenide. All these 2-dimensional materials have unique, specific properties that make them very interesting for future applications. However, a thorough understanding of their growth kinetics are often still lacking, what hampers the production of large-scale, single-crystalline materials, necessary for these promising applications.

Confirmed invited speakers are:
Prof. Dr. Willi Auwärter (TU München)
Dr. Gertjan van Baarle (Leiden Probe Microscopy B.V.)
Dr. Semonti Bhattacharyya (Leiden Institute of Physics, Leiden University)
Prof. Dr. Thomas Heine (TU Dresden)
Dr. Bárbara Canto (AMO GmbH)
Dr. Minghao Yu (TU Dresden)
Dr. Antonija Grubišić Čabo (University of Groningen)

The symposium will take place in the Gorlaeus Building of Leiden University, Einsteinweg 55, 2333 CC Leiden.