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

Everybody knows that cardboard paper can be a highly
anisotropic material. You can easily bend or roll it in one direction
and it is stiff in the other. If you take a close look you will find
that the paper is periodically buckled along one direction. We have now
exploited this phenomenon on the nanoscale to define the roll-up
direction of ultra-thin membranes on a substrate surface.

The intrinsic manipulation of thin inorganic or organic nanomembranes (including graphene)
on substrate surfaces has attracted great attention over recent years, since it allows to shape
two-dimensional layers into functional 3D objects of virtually any material, geometry and size.

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.