Best Researcher Award for Moniku Michalskou
Dr. Monika Michalska has been awarded the 8th Edition of the International Innovator Awards in the category of "Best Researcher Award" in Materials Engineering for her Contribution and Honourable Achievement in Innovative Research.
The commission awarded Dr. Michalska according to her scientific achievements (that are summarized by commission in the link below) and the article which have been published in Results in Engineering journal this year entitled: "A facile approach for fabricating g-C3N4-based materials as metal-free photocatalysts".
This study introduces a novel and simple method for synthesizing graphitic carbon nitrides (g-C3N4, g-CN) from melamine The method requires only 30 minutes of thermal treatment at temperatures between 400 and 550 °C in either a nitrogen or air atmosphere. The synthesized materials were characterized using elemental analysis, X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), diffuse reflectance UV–Vis spectroscopy (DRS), photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Furthermore, Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations were performed to support the experimental findings. The research emphasizes the influence of synthesis conditions, such as temperature and atmosphere, on the structure, morphology, and photocatalytic properties of g-C3N4 materials. Photocatalytic performance was evaluated through the degradation of acid orange 7 (AO7) under UV (360 nm) and visible (420 nm) light. The primary objective was to present a novel method for the synthesis of g-C3N4-based materials. This was achieved by demonstrating that organic composites generated at lower temperatures have the best photocatalytic capabilities. Furthermore, the approach to achieving high-quality photocatalysts was shown to be cost-effective, environmentally friendly, and scalable.
This work was realized within the „Atomic Design of Carbon-Based Materials for New Normal Society“ (AtomDeC) between the partners from: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Japan. Dr. Monika Michalska is the Czech leader of the AtomDeC project (financing support by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, Czech Republic (contract no. 8F21007)).
The AtomDeC Consortium is formed from representatives of three continents: each V4 country, Japan, and Canada. Our collective scientific power is focused on advanced carbon-based materials (CBM) target materials by adhering to the concept of “atomic design”, which has been challenging to achieve for C-materials with disordered/amorphous framework. Our integrated work packages will be executed by experts in synthesis, analysis, and theory giving credibility to the deployment of the concept of "atomic design" for CBMs.
The AtomDeC Consortium directly addresses the Joint Call for developing advanced materials for extreme environments, electronics and energy harvesting, such as gas storage, flexible electrode/supercapacitors/conductive thin-layers, microelectronics, and optically active materials with high voltage/structure stability. The unique mechanical properties of porous CBMs and our combined engineering expertise allow for targeting COVID19-related material design, such as anti-virus filters.
The scientific career of Dr. Michalska was summarized by the International Innovator Awards commision, and presented on their website: Dr. Monika Michalska - Materials Engineering - Best Researcher Award
