Peter Cendula's blog

Self-positioned nanomembranes such as rolled-up tubes and wrinkled thin films have been potential systems for a variety of applications and basic studies on elastic properties of nanometer-thick systems. Although there is a clear driving force towards elastic energy minimization in each system, the exploration of intermediate states where specific characteristics could be chosen by a slight modification of a processing parameter had not been experimentally realized.

We're looking for a research assistant at the Institute of Computational Physics (ICP). We use multiphysics models to design and analyze electrical energy converters such as electrochemical devices (fuel cells and water-splitting cells) and solar cells (photovoltaic).

The Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW)
is one of the largest and most productive universities of applied
sciences in Switzerland, with a strong presence both nationally and
internationally. Among the ZHAW’s distinguishing features are
interdisciplinarity

A thin film subject to compressive strain can either bend (for large strain gradient) or wrinkle (for small strain gradient). The bending is traditionally used in thermostats (bimetal stripes), but couple of years ago, it was extended to the nanoscale thin films which can bend and roll-up to tubes with defined number of rotations. The wrinkles are also rather common in macro- and microscale thin films.
Here, we developed an equilibrium phase diagram for the shape of
compressively strained free-hanging films by total strain energy
minimization.