Magnetic Nanoparticles: Challenges and Future Prospects

Description of workshop: ‘Magnetic Nanoparticles: Challenges & future prospects’

This is a workshop devoted to magnetic nanoparticles, considering both fundamental aspects and applications. Although magnetism is one of the oldest scientific disciplines, it remains at the forefront of the emerging nanotechnology era in limited atom systems such as nanoparticles, which bridge the gap between atomic and solid-state physics. The control of their monodispersity and surface properties leads to a variety of nanotechnological applications. Their use as non-volatile data storage media offers some insuperable advantages over other forms of storage, which is based on a rare combination of extremely fast switching time with long term stability. The drive towards ever smaller and faster electronic devices has forced scientists to consider quantum dynamics, which governs the interaction of particles at atomic scale. Moreover, magnetic nanoparticles are close to be employed in tumor therapy, bio-labeling, contrast agents in magnetic imaging and targeted drug delivery.

The efforts to understand magnetism, structure and their correlation in nanoparticle systems are hindered by the dispersion of their size and properties and by variations in surface structure (use of surfactants etc.). Furthermore, the resulting structures and properties depend very much on the kinetics of the preparation process, and therefore particles prepared with different techniques (cluster beam, evaporation, organometallic synthesis etc.) differ in their properties. Along with the advance in the preparation processes, new characterization techniques (scanning probe based, spin polarized electrons, element specific hysteresis, ultrafast magnetization dynamics) have become indispensable to studying nanomagnetism. Research also stimulates the understanding of new phenomena at nanoscales, and generates new device principles in high density storage media, nanobiomagnetics, self-organization, hierarchical assembly, and magnetic electronics.

Hence, a synergistic approach is required within a consortium of scientists who are involved in different aspects of magnetic nanoparticle science and technology. One of the workshop aims will be to bridge the gap between scientific and practical aspects, and establish a common language between physicists, chemists, engineers and biologists interested in this field. Therefore, the participants will have diverse expertise related to different aspects of magnetic nanoparticle characterization, synthesis, study of fundamental properties, and optimization for current and emerging applications. Therefore, the workshop focus is on:

●Fundamentals of magnetic vs. geometric and electronic structure of nanoparticles

●Potential and feasibility of emerging applications with magnetic nanoparticles

            Magnetic electronics & Spin dynamics

            Nanobiomagnetics (viruses, sensing, DNA sequencing, health..)

            Self-organization & hierarchical assembly

            High density mangetic storage

This is an open workshop. We invite all our colleagues to participate, in particular those in the Netherlands. We specifically encourage participation by junior scientists (graduate students/postdocs to present, if possible, a poster/short talk related to the workshop topic). The number of potential participants is limited only by the capacity of the facilities and availability of funds. Please, note that the registration fee will be100 Euro (50 Euro for students).

We plan to have up to 20 invited keynote speakers from the international community including also representatives from Dutch groups. We will have two plenary talks each morning and two each afternoon (45 min each) followed by a discussion session. The invited speakers will be chosen equally between experimentalists, theorists, and computer simulation experts within all fields. Each keynote invitee will be asked to present an overview-type talk on the corresponding research area. We want to give time for researchers from different fields to interact with each other and, if possible, to initiate interdisciplinary collaborations.