VŠB-TUO had a very strong representation at the international conference NANOCON focused on nanomaterials research, the 15th edition of which took place in Brno from 18 to 20 October. One of the plenary lectures on Catalysis for Sustainable and Circular Chemistry was given by Jagadeesh Rajenahally, author of several publications in the journal Science, who is based at the Nanotechnology Centre(CNT) CEET and the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis in Rostock, Germany. Invited speakers included Kamila Koci from the CEET’s Institute of Environmental Technology (IET) and CNT Director Daniela Plachá.
“I am glad that 14 representatives from VSB-TUO attended this year’s conference, including four students. This is the most in the 15-year history of the conference. This strong participation was probably related to the main theme of the conference, which was nanotechnology for sustainable energy and environment, an area that I and my colleagues from CEET have been dealing with for a long time,” said Radek Zbořil, head of the Materials-Envi Lab at CNT/CEET, who has been the main scientific guarantor of the NANOCON conference for many years. This year, 250 experts from 27 countries attended the conference.
The environmental applications of nanomaterials and their use in the field of circular economy and energy storage were discussed by Daniela Plachá in her lecture entitled Graphene-based sorbents for efficient removal of pharmaceutical contaminants and their use as effective supercapacitors. In the same program section, Kamila Kočí presented a contribution on the use of nanomaterials for photocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide, or Petr Praus from the Faculty of Materials Science and Technology and IET, who described the possibilities of using graphitic carbon nitride in photocatalytic degradation of organic substances and nitrogen oxides. Maruthapandi Moorthy from CNT/CEET also shared his experience from his research on antimicrobial nanomaterials in the program section Bionanotechnology and Nanomaterials for Medicine, and another representative from the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague had a poster session.
NANOCON is an international conference organized by TANGER and the Czech Society for New Materials and Technologies. It is the first conference in the Czech Republic focused solely on nanomaterials, their research, applications and potential impact on the environment and human health. It connects different research communities and brings direct contact with the application sphere. The history of the conference dates back to 2009. Plenary and invited speakers regularly include the world’s most prominent nanotechnology scientists. They include Louis Brus from Columbia University, one of this year’s Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry, and Michael Gratzel from EPFL Lausanne, the world’s most cited materials scientist. The conference is also an important opportunity for PhD students to present their research to top researchers and network with them. This year, PhD students made up 40 percent of all participants.
