Mihaela Nedelcu is a Ph.D student in the POLYFILM network working at the University of Cambridge. She received her M.Sc. degree from the Department of Physics, “Al.I.Cuza” University of Iasi, Romania. During her M.Sc. studies she received an Erasmus-Socrates Scholarship to spend one year at the University of Groningen, where she worked in the group of Prof. Dr. Ullrich Steiner. Her project was focussed on the pattern formation driven by temperature gradients which can be used to pattern polymer films on the sub-micrometer scale. When confined into a line geometry, two different structures were identified: (a) the amplification of capillary instabilities leading to columns and (b) thermocapillary flow that leads to a homogeneous coating on the confining walls.
Images from M. Nedelcu, Soft Matter, 1, 62-65 (2005)
Current Project:
The goal of my Ph.D project is to pattern inorganic materials at the micrometer and sub-micrometer scale, such as superconducting YBa2Cu3Ox, metals and oxides of Fe, Ni and Cu, and semiconducting aluminium doped zinc oxide (AZO) using soft lithography. The idea of the project is to use precursor solutions which contain polymers mixed with inorganic materials (nitrates) and solvent. The pattern formation occurs in the soft state followed by a heat treatment to pyrolize the structures.
