Technological progress is increasingly relying on smaller building blocks in electronics, energy and various industrial applications. This has created a strong demand for the precise design of functional nanoscale building blocks suitable for bottom-up fabrication approaches. Hierarchical assemblies of molecules and nanostructures therefore attract significant research interest in materials science.

This PhD project focuses on the development and investigation of novel one-dimensional nanostructures formed within nanotube templates. Carbon and boron nitride nanotubes, with their nanometer-scale inner diameters and micrometer-scale lengths, provide unique confined environments for the formation of molecular assemblies and crystal structures that may not be stable in bulk. These confined systems often exhibit distinct physical properties arising from their reduced dimensionality and spatial constraints.

The PhD candidate will be involved in the design and synthesis of novel functional heterostructures based on carbon and boron nitride nanotubes, and will use optical spectroscopy, including near-field techniques, to explore their properties.