On 3-4 December 2012, I participated in a meeting Join PhD Seminar, which was attended by PhD students from the Institute of Metallurgy and Materials Science and Enano group belonging to Institute of Materials Science of Technical University of Dresden. The whole meeting was held in Radeburg. It was the first meeting organized by those two institutes. Each of the participants presented the achievements in his researches connecting with doctoral thesis. The topic of my presentation was "Wet chemical surface of crystalline silicon texturisation for photovoltaics."
On 5-6 December 2012 I participated in the Nano-scale and Advanced Materials Characterization Techniques training organized by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Materialkunde eV, supported by the Dresden Fraunhofer Cluster Nanoanalysis (DFCNA) and The Federation of European Materials Societies (FEMS). The training was devoted to nanostructural researches in materials science and engineering. Analytical high-resolution techniques are important for the new nanotechnology and thin film technology. Nanoanalyze is increasingly necessary for the correct characterization of nanostructured materials in the production, as well as for understanding the nanostructure of materials. Specific use of the available methods shows that often a combination of several techniques of analysis is necessary to ensure that both the process control in nanotechnology, as well as the performance and reliability of new products. Many new developments in the field of imaging and nanoanalyze allows structural and chemical characteristics of <100 nm, up to atomic dimensions.

Eureka! Finally I did solve the problems (mentioned last time) related to coordinate systems. I am now able to get proper sets of parameters of grain boundaries and, using my program, obtain correct distributions of boundaries. I moved on to work on improvments of the methods of calculating the distributions, we believie it can be done better comparing to how it is usually done. I can now focus on the main and the most interesting issues related to my work.

My activities in December:

In December I participated in „Joint PhD Semiar – Enano group from Institute for Materials Science of Technical University Dresden and Institute of Metallurgy and Materials Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences”, which was held in Radeburg: 3-4 December 2012. During the same month I also participated in workshop: „Nano-scale Materials and Advanced CharacterizationTechniques” in Dresden 5-6 December 2012.

December was dedicated to diffusion process observation in the PEM coatings using Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching technique. I prepared two series of samples for SEM analysis. The first series of specimens was cross-linked by four different concentrations of the chemical reagent and the second one was subjected to variable temperature conditions. I have started working on results obtained in a radial flow chamber experiments. Moreover I presented results obtained so far for my coatings on the PhD seminar in Dresden. During visit in Germany I also participated in workshop "Nano-scale Materials and Advanced Characterization Techniques". I listened a series of lectures on advanced nano-analysis techniques for materials science and I had an opportunity to become familiar with the equipment available in the laboratories of the Fraunhofer (IZFP-D) Institute, where course took place.

In December we took part in the Joint PhD Seminar (Radeburg, Germany) and Nano-scale materials and advanced characterization techniques – European advanced training course (Dresden, Germany).
During the former we had an opportunity to exchange our scientific experience and consult results of our recent investigations with PhD students from Fraunhofer Institute for Nondestructive Studies. During the seminar I gave a speech on “Aluminium matrix nano-composites reinforced with aluminium nitrides”.
The latter gave us an overview of number of advanced techniques used in materials characterization, including Scanning Electron Microscopy, Transmission Electron Microscopy, Atom Probe Tomography, Nanoindentation, etc..