PhD position on the development of new biomass-based thermal insulation materials

The Laboratory for Building Energy Materials and Components strives to create novel solutions for a more sustainable built environment, working amongst other topics on materials for energy efficiency, on the utilisation of more readily available and sustainable raw materials and on the mitigation and reversal of greenhouse gas emissions. With a young, driven and solution-oriented team, we do so both on the level of basic research and in close collaboration with industry.

We are offering a

PhD position on the development of new biomass-based thermal insulation materials

We are looking for a PhD student to study, develop and upscale new biomass-based thermal insulation materials with a very low CO2-footprint and a competitive thermal insulation performance. For this, the PhD student shall study and characterise suitable raw materials, their processing as well as the produced insulation materials. Furthermore, the PhD student will take into account application aspects, i.e. the use in buildings in different systems, and some economic factors. Towards the end of the project, the devel-oped solution shall be up-scaled and installed in a demonstrator, e.g. NEST at Empa. The results of the project, ideally, shall serve as the foundation for a subsequent industrialisation of the developed material in order to have a tangible impact on the Swiss built environment. At the same time, the scientific knowledge gains shall be published in peer-reviewed journals as part of the PhD to create visibility for low-impact building materials. 

The project is part of a larger ETH domain project with Swiss academic partners in the fields of climate research, energy, CCS, buildings and biodiversity. The PhD position will be part of the ETH doctoral program.