Scientific Internships

The following topical areas can serve as the basis for scientific internships on the level of a Masters thesis or comparable internships. If you are interested in more details, contact us at r.bliem@arcnl.nl.

Amorphous alloys: Strong and stable materials despite “100% of defects”

Thin films are ideal model systems to explore the effects of disorder on the mechanical properties of solids. You will grow thin films that are promising for the formation of metallic glasses, and study their structure and composition as a function of growth conditions and substrate material. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy will allow for compositional analysis, while electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy will give insights into the surface topography and structure. After establishing a growth recipe for a glassy material, you will assess its chemical stability in challenging environments and follow chemical changes at its surface using near-ambient pressure photoelectron spectroscopy.

High-entropy materials in the ultra-thin limit

High-entropy materials are compounds with five or more principal elements and received their name based on the high configurational entropy of the resulting mixture. While this sounds not very different from a regular complex alloy, the high entropy has been found to introduce exceptional properties, such as increasing ductility at low temperature, remarkable mechanical strength or even superconductivity. In this project you will study the properties of high-entropy materials on the nanoscale. You will grow thin films of a high entropy alloy or ceramic of different thicknesses down to a few nanometers using pulsed laser deposition. The structural, mechanical, and chemical properties of the films at different thicknesses will allow for conclusions on the role of entropy effects and their breakdown. For this purpose, the surface and interface properties of the materials will be analyzed using a variety of surface science techniques: X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, electron microscopy, scanning probe microscopy, and several more.