The Department of Materials and Environmental Chemistry (MMK) is one of the largest departments at the Faculty of Science at Stockholm University with about 160 employees, including about 50 PhD students and about 40 postdoctoral fellows/researchers. The research is focused on materials, including biobased materials, self-assembled materials, porous materials, and inorganic materials. The research projects typically encompass synthesis, processing and multifaceted characterization of materials, with applications related to grand challenges in sustainability, energy and health. More information can be found at: www.mmk.su.se.

Project description
This recruitment is connected to the Wallenberg Initiative Materials Science for Sustainability (WISE), wise-materials.org. WISE, funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, is the largest-ever investment in materials science in Sweden and will encompass major efforts at Sweden’s foremost universities over the course of 10 years. The vision is a sustainable future through materials science. Read more: https://wise-materials.org.

All early-stage researchers recruited into the WISE program will be a part of the WISE Graduate School, an ambitious nationwide program of seminars, courses, research visits, and other activities to promote a strong multi-disciplinary and international network between PhD students, postdocs, researchers and industry.

The purpose of this project is to develop textile waste-based foams with superinsulating properties (i.e. a thermal conductivity below the value for air) and specific strength in the wet state that is superior or on par to fossil-based insulating materials. The postdoctoral fellow is expected to identify and upcycle fibrillar starting materials from textile waste, develop scalable and environmentally benign processing and cross-linking routes to produce super-insulating and moisture resilient foams, and characterise the structure of the foams with a combination of e.g. SEM, AFM, and SAXS/WAXS. The postdoctoral fellow will also be responsible to characterise the relative humidity-dependent mechanical properties and thermal conductivity with e.g. Hotdisk thermal analyzer and Instron universal testing machine.

Closing date: 13 March 2023.

Read more information and apply here.