FLUXIONIC is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network (DN) (HORIZON-MSCA-2022-DN-01) aiming to provide integrated training for early career researchers, enabling them to achieve scientific excellence and set the foundations of their future careers.

Our main goal is to train young researchers for future leadership in the rapidly growing fields of nanotechnology. Controlling transport of liquid matter through channels with dimensions from Ångströms to nanometres is a fundamental scientific challenge bridging Physics, Chemistry, Materials Science, and nanoscale technologies. It has huge technological and socio-economic impact, as it is a base for vital applications such as clean water, disease treatment, sustainable production, storage and usage of energy.  Explaining the anomalous transport behaviour at the sub-nano scale, where the conventional macroscopic description of transport breaks down, necessitates close integration of experiments, theory, and atomistic simulations. The emerging field promises.

FLUXIONIC will train a new generation of early-stage researchers in the diverse skills that are needed to develop and apply precisely controlled nanofluidic mass transport. We are a group of leading experts in the relevant fields and will provide a collaborative and stimulating environment for the doctoral candidates, who will have a chance to participate in a unique, balanced, and timely supra-disciplinary training with opportunities to move between industry and academia. The European network involves academic nodes an industrial partners in Barcelona, Paris, Berlin, Mainz, Bochum, Delft, Trondheim, Cambridge, Oxford, Manchester and Lausanne

This PhD position will focus on the entropic transport of liquid mixtures at the nanoscale.

The miniaturization of fluidic devices, as well as cellular regulation mechanisms and cellular signalling, relies on the transport of ions across channels or pores whose sections vary between the nanometric and the micrometric scale. When the scales over which the dissolved ions or liquid interfaces evolve overlap with the geometric dimensions of the device, the assumption that diffusive transport is locally adapted to the geometry, breaks down.

A new regime with dynamic coupling between solute and liquid transport emerges. In this project we will develop a mesoscopic approach to describe the dynamics of a complex fluid mixture in a dynamically and thermodynamically consistent framework. We will analyse the impact of relative substrate hydrophilicity on effective flow across corrugated channels. The theoretical framework covers the relevant length and time scales in which dissolved species (such as cations and anions) distribute, diffuse and advect, and the impact they have on flow patterns. The project will analyse the flow regimes due to longitudinally correlations induced by such heterogeneities, as well as their impact in the accumulation, transport, and rectification of dissolved species.

We will use the theoretical and computational results as guidance to understand and propose nano devices for pointof- care analysis. These are devices constructed and characterized in the laboratory of Prof. Hernanddz-Machado at UB. An improved performance for these devices requires a proper control of the rheological properties of water solutions by reducing the friction by nano-patterning.

Gross salary per year

33.583,33€

How to apply

Required documents

Application letter, Curriculum vitae, recommendation letters

Send your application to:

email

ipagonabarraga@ub.edu

Name

Ignacio Pagonabarraga

email subject

Application PhD position FLUXIONIC