Project “Soda-Lights”: IMC gets 3-year funding from the Foundation for Research of Natural Resources in Finland

Illustration: luminescent hackmanite “found” in Finland’s soil.

IMC received funding from the Foundation for Research of Natural Resources in Finland for a three-year project called Soda-Lights, which is a pun on “sodalites”: as many already know, hackmanite, a wonder material belonging to the group of sodalite minerals, shines visible light under UV radiation. In this project, the aim is to produce these luminescent sodalites using Finland’s national mineral resources, and its main purpose is to produce white light in LEDs. Sodalites contain elements that are not endangered or rare, in contrast to cerium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG:Ce), which contains non-sustainable elements and is used in LEDs today.

IMC and JYU receive € 500,000 for a recycling project

From waste to next generation molecular materials

The joint project of IMC and the University of Jyväskylä received a total of € 500,000 in funding from the Technology Industries of Finland’s Centennial Foundation and the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation in The Future Makers funding round. The project is led by Professor Ari Väisänen while Academy Researcher Jani Moilanen and IMC’s Mika Lastusaari lead their sub-projects.

About the project: “The need for critical metals, such as rare earths, will increase in the future. These metals are needed in electric cars, lights, wind turbines and electronic devices, for example. The recycling of rare earths is low due to the lack of efficient and environmentally friendly recycling methods. The project will develop new next-generation materials based on rare earths. The metals to be processed are recovered from industrial waste and by-product streams.

Read more: https://techfinland100.fi/tulevaisuuden-tekijat-2021-vaisanen/

Emilia receives FinTAC travel grant

Emilia received a travel grant from Finnish Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry Association FinTAC ry (www) for the 7th EuCheMS Chemistry Congress (www) held in Liverpool, United Kingdom on 26–30th of August. The grant was awarded to her at the FinTAC ry meeting in Tampere university of Technology by the chairman Prof. Vesa-Pekka Lehto (right) and M.Sc. (Tech.) Markus M. Hackspik. Congratulations, Emilia!

In addition, check out new collaboration publication about borosilicate glasses with persistent luminescence.

Del Cerro, P.R., Salminen, T., Lastusaari, M., and Petit, L., “Persistent luminescent borosilicate glasses using direct particles doping method”, Scripta Mater. 151 (2018) 38-41.
Read online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scriptamat.2018.03.034

Funding news and congratulations!

Esko got funding for his PhD topic in “Near infra-red absorbing metal complexes and their use in solar energy” from Walter Ahlström foundation, Minnea got additional funding from Finnish Cultural Foundation into “Luminescent materials and perovskites in solar energy” and Emilia got funded by Vilho, Yrjö and Kalle Väisälä foundation. Congrats to all and keep doing the good job!

Walter Ahsltrömin säätiö apurahat (www)
Suomen kulttuurirahasto (www)
Väisälä apurahat 2017 (pdf)

Here are also some news about the Eskos funding, unfortunately only in Finnish.
University of Turku news (www)
Technology Academy of Finland (www)