6. September 2023

MXenes expert visit

We recently had the honor of a visit from Alex Gogotsi to our labs in Wiener Neustadt (Low Energy Ion Scattering, Batteries development) and Vienna (ELSA, SFA). He is the head of Carbon Ukraine, a worldwide leader in the production of MAX phases and MXenes, while at CEST we have recently started working on these phenomenal materials. We thank Dr. Gogotsi for his visit and the meaningful discussion in front of our excellent surface analytical cluster. We look forward to working together in the future to develop efficient and sustainable materials for new technologies.

26. May 2023

COAST and LEIS 2023

A big thank you goes out to all speakers, project partners and interested attendants, who attend our 2nd Conference of Applied Surface Technology (COAST) in Vienna and our Low Energy Ion Scattering (LEIS) Workshop in Wr. Neustadt.

The presented opportunities and exciting solutions in the fields of energy, materials and sustainability were impressive and will help us to tackle our future challenges. We are thrilled for the future and ready to tackle all upcoming challenges together!

See you all next year and thank you to our speakers from industry and academia:

Wien Energie GmbH / Teresa Schubert
thyssenkrupp / Mingquan Yu
Systemiq Ltd. / Andreas Wagner
Infineon Technologies / Michael Nelhiebel
ams OSRAM / Peter Zach
Evonik / Hrishikesh Joshi

Jörg Libuda, Guido Grundmeier, Marko Sturm, Andreas Nenning, Erwin Lam, Robert Meißner, Freddy Kleitz, Bernhard Bayer, Sally McArthur, Barbara Putz, Serhiy Cherevko, Gonzalo Prieto, Palaniappan Subramanian, Charles Creissen, Patricia Rodriguez Macia, James Birrell, Adam Slabon, Klaus Bretterbauer

And a great thank you to our sponsors:
ecoplus. Niederösterreichs Wirtschaftsagentur GmbH, Land Niederösterreich, IONTOF GmbH

26. May 2023

GFF site Visit at CEST

One important event follows the next at CEST. We are all the more pleased about the recent visit of the GFF to our site and the opportunity to present our projects. Especially our brand new Low Energy Ion Scattering device has to be highlighted, which enables cutting-edge research and was co-funded by the state of Lower Austria.

For this reason, a big THANK YOU to the Gesellschaft für Forschungsförderung Niederösterreich m.b.H. for the good cooperation and support!

8. April 2023

CEST at the I-CONECT 2023 conference

Our senior researcher Dr. Soniya Gahlawat was invited to deliver a talk at I-CONECT 2023 conference (International conference on nanomaterials for Electrocatalysis) from 20-22nd March in Delhi, India. 

She presented an overview of her research with prime focus on her ongoing project (ELSA facility) along with her published work on photoelectrochemical water splitting.  She was delighted to get the opportunity to talk about electrochemical surface and interface analysis (ELSA) cluster), and to establish new collaborations.

We started 2023 with the calibration of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) instruments, major parts of ELSA cluster. Both XPS and AES facilities are in fully operational mode now.

15. December 2022

Sponsorship OBSV 2023

The OBSV thanks CEST Kompetenzzentrum für elektrische Oberflächentechnologie for its sustained commitment in connection with the promotion of sport for people with disabilities to improve health and mobility, to increase the quality of life, to integrate into society and to educate people about sporting success at national and international level.

5. December 2022

Lower Austria’s young scientist calendar 2023

Our PhD student Markus Ostermann was able to take part in this year’s “Lower Austria young scientist calendar” featuring 12 promising young scientists (JungforscherInnen-Kalender 2023: NÖ Forschungstalente im Fokus (ecoplus.at)).

The scientists were photographed with collodion wet plate process and a wooden camera from 1894.

Furthermore, podcasts of the featured young scientists describing their work and of the calendar’s creators are available at: NÖ JungforscherInnen Kalender 2023 (stationista.com)

28. November 2022

CEST at the AIChE 2022 Annual Meeting

Our senior Dr. Bilotto and student MSc. Ostermann attended the AIChE 2022 AnnualMeeting in Phoenix. Huge conference on chemical engineering with strong participations from industries and academia from all over the world. The two representatives from CEST had one presentation talk each.

Dr. Bilotto has presented at AIChE 2022 his PhD work on the role of ions in adhesion and the recent publication done in collaboration with TU Wien on mussel adhesion, published on Biointerphases and funded by the CEST strategic COMET project Biglu. 

MSc Ostermann has presented at AIChE 2022 his recent publication on green production of graphene oxide. He also showed some of the results on direct application for de-icing and water uptake functionalities. The work is funded by the European Union in the framework CleanSky2.

Dr. Bilotto and MSc Ostermann met with Prof. Andresen Eguiluz and Dr. Syeda. Lovely lunch tasting proper Mexican food while discussing way to open collaboration between University of California Merced and CEST. We are all excited for this new possible collaboration on materials, biological/robot interfaces, and lubrication.

If you want to learn more about mussel adhesion, contact us or check the perspective here: Mussel adhesion: A fundamental perspective on factors governing strong underwater adhesion: Biointerphases: Vol 17, No 5 (scitation.org)

If you want to learn more about graphene oxide, check our latest publication: Materials | Free Full-Text | Development and Up-Scaling of Electrochemical Production and Mild Thermal Reduction of Graphene Oxide (mdpi.com)

20. November 2022

Best Young Author Award presented to Julia Linert

Miss Dipl.Ing. Julia Linert participated in the IFAC (International Federation of Automation Control) Conference on Technology, Culture and International Stability (TECIS) 2022 from 26-28 October 2022 in Prishtina, Kosovo. She was Chair for several sessions and acted as Austria’s representative in the IFAC Technical Committee (TC 9.5). Ms Linert was awarded the “Young Author Awards” for her presentation on “Applications of Microfluidics and Nanotechnologies for Point-of-Care Devices”. At this internationally well-attended conference, contacts were established with internationally leading research groups and industrial partners, which could lead to participation in bilateral and EU research projects and make a significant contribution to the international research landscape.

14. November 2022

CEST at #AVS68 in Pittsburgh

CEST at #AVS68 in Pittsburgh. The scientific director prof Valtiner has presented the recently published paper that came out from the strategic project Biglu. Dr. Bilotto has presented in his poster recents results obtained in the EU funded project Graphicing, and the strategies of new projects on MXenes and cleanwaferpro, supported by# FFG in the framework of the Comet action. Dr. Gahlawat presented her poster about the new xps cluster that will be assembled in collaboration with TU Wien in the next months. A successful week for CEST , working on connections and Networks in and outside of Europe.