Within Wrocław Doctoral School of Institutes of Polish Academy of Sciences, LuNASI is looking for talented young researchers with passion to and some experience in chemistry and physics. More details on how to apply and about the conditions can be found of the web page of the WDSI PAS. Some of the topics can be realized within research grants from NCN.
LuNASI offers 2 topics for ph.d. .
1. Luminescence thermometry based on temperature-induced phase transition in materials doped with Ln3+ ions
Supervisor: Łukasz Marciniak, D.Sc. (dr hab.)
Discipline: Chemistry
Description: The aim of this Ph.D. thesis is to find and understand the correlation between host material composition and dopant ion concentration and the thermometric properties of phosphors that can find applications in luminescence thermometry with high relative sensitivity and low temperature resolution.
2. Luminescent nanoparticles doped with lanthanide ions for 4 colour Resonant Energy Transfer (RET) biosensing
Supervisor: Artur Bednarkiewicz, prof.
Discipline: Physics
Description: DNA sequencing has become an indispensable tool in clinical diagnosis and life scien¬ces, for example in biotechnology, evolutionary research or in genetic profiling of microorganisms. Current single-molecule DNA sequencing techniques, however, suffer from several disad-vantages that can be circumvented by employing the unique photo¬physical features of novel lanthanide doped luminescent nanomaterials (LnNP) which (1) efficiently emit short wave-length light under NIR excitation (2) LnNP are very photostable and do not blink. (3) LnNP emit multiple narrow emission bands under single wavelength excitation, such that a single luminescent nanoparticle can be used as a donor for FRET to four different acceptor dyes, which are required to identify individual dNTPs. The research will focus on the verification of this hypothesis and will consist in measurements of spectroscopic properties (emission/excitation spectra, times of luminescence build-up and decay, dependence of luminescence intensity as a function of excitation power) and imaging of nanoparticles co-doped with the above-mentioned ions.
Requirements: general knowledge of photophysical processes in lanthanide ions, knowledge of the basics of photonics, spectroscopy, lasers, software (Matlab, LabView, etc.), the construction of optical and opto-electronic systems.
Other possibilities are avaialable in the field of nanothermometry, photon avalanche, FRET sensing...
