Materials science has been given high priority at Linköping University. We offer a unique environment in Sweden, with excellent research facilities with funding derived from all major research initiatives, including Linnaeus grants from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF) and the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA Vinnex). An ERC Advanced Grant has also been awarded.
We intend to become a truly international, interdisciplinary research centre for advanced functional materials (AFM). We will achieve this by concerted efforts in carefully selected areas that focus on creating social benefit from:
- Developing new high-performance soft, hard and smart hybrid materials
- Integrating manufacturing, analysis and computational modelling
- Securing intellectual property rights and carrying out R&D in collaboration with companies
- Training researchers and industrial specialists.
The research includes active industrial collaboration. In terms of academic measures, AFM scientists are extremely productive, and produce large numbers of innovations, patents and spin-off companies. Research into AFMs creates unmatched multi-functional materials for the manufacturing, pulp & paper, energy, and IT industries, and life sciences technology. The AFM research centre will initially conduct advanced research within thin-film technology, the development of wide band gap semiconductors, the self-assembly of organic electronic materials, and the printing of large-area organic electronic components.
Our vision is that application-inspired basic research focused on the design of new materials at the atomic/molecular scale that will solve societal problems within energy, the environment, health and employment. We will integrate research at many levels, discover new materials, enable the efficient production of components, and develop materials for efficient energy conversion and white LED lighting.
Professor Igor Abrikosov is Director of the AFM Research Centre.
Brief facts
Total budget: SEK 32.5 million (2023)
Principal applicant: Linköping University 100%
