On Wednesday, 18 October, 2017 at 4.15 pm, ARCNL PhD student Pavel Antonov will defend his PhD thesis on new methods to drastically lower friction and wear by the use of advanced materials and nanostructures. This makes Antonov the first ARCNL PhD student to earn a doctor’s degree. He started his research at Leiden University and moved to Amsterdam at the start of ARCNL; the defence will take place in Leiden.
Fundamental research on friction and wear is rapidly gaining relevance for applications in the modern production of computer chips. The production process faces ever more stringent tolerances – nowadays in the order of only a few nanometers – in the positioning and overlay of structural layers in the chips. Antonov’s research has, therefore, come at the right time. Since several months, Pavel Antonov has been working as a design engineer in the field of friction and wear with semiconductor equipment manufacturer ASML.
