Postdoctoral position: Metal-organic clusters for novel porous materials...

We are looking for a motivated postdoctoral research fellow to combine the following topics:

(i) Synthesis of metal-organic clusters as building blocks for novel porous materials. This part of the work will focus on the synthesis and in-depth characterization of well-defined metal-organic clusters. These clusters will be assembled into novel porous metal-organic materials (e.g., through linker exchange strategies) in close collaboration with a PhD student in our group and several other researchers in a large network project involving 6 Belgian universities. We will mainly investigate clusters that are stable, soluble, and cannot be obtained in situ under typical synthesis conditions of metal-organic frameworks.

(ii) Synthesis of metal-organic clusters for use in next-generation lithography. Starting from our exploratory study using metal-organic frameworks (see https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-020-00827-x ), this part of the work will focus on the development of novel resist materials for EUV lithography. This novel type of lithography is deemed to be the future of the semiconductor industry but requires novel materials to reach optimal performance in nanometer-scale patterning. Conventional chemically amplified resists (CARs) that worked well in the past do not provide high-resolution patterning through EUV lithography. This limitation is mainly due to their multi-component chemistry and acid diffusion mechanism. Single-component resist platforms with simple patterning mechanisms will need to be applied for next-generation nanopatterning applications.

In this postdoctoral project, you will be working together with scientists and engineers with complementary expertise  in materials synthesis, film deposition, the characterization of porous and crystalline materials, the characterization of novel resist materials for lithography, etc. Part of this project will be carried out in collaboration with imec (https://www.imec-int.com/en ), a leading micro- and nanoelectronics research center. For more information on the research group coordinating this project, please refer to http://amelootgroup.org/   and https://twitter.com/AmelootGroup .