The Physics department was founded in 1970, simultaneously with the establishment of the School of Physics and Mathematics and the operation date of the University of Ioannina (UOI) as an independent Higher Education Institution. Today, the UOI has 18 departments with 142 research laboratories and there are more than 26 thousand and 4 thousand undergraduate and postgraduate students at the university, and its research committee has great experience in managing research projects and funds. The UOI has demonstrated significant scientific and technological achievements in research areas of great interest to humans and society such as Catalysis, New Functional Materials, Energy, Environment, Informatics, and Health Sciences, as well as in various interdisciplinary scientific and technological areas arising from the above.
The Section of Solid State Physics and Physics of Materials and Surfaces is one of the four sections of the Department of Physics and the laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Materials and Environment (PME) (nanomaterials.physics.uoi.gr) which is part of it is one of Department’s 12 research laboratories, and it offers research and technological services to industry and other agencies. It has participated in research programs of private funding in the development of new materials for technological-commercial applications since its establishment. The research activities of the laboratory are related to the production of Nanomaterials with Flame Spray Pyrolysis (FSP) Technology, material characterization (XRD, BET, Dynamic Light Scattering that belong to the PME laboratory, and TEM, SEM to the UOI), and the study of catalytic/interfacial processes with specialized spectroscopic techniques available (Raman microscopy, Electron Paramagnetic Resonance, XPS, ATR‐FTIR, Diffuse Reflectance UV-Vis, Low-Temperate UV-Vis Mossbauer).
In other words, the collaboration team in the ECoS project is engaged in research that combines materials with specific functions for medical use, catalytic degradation, and hydrogen production. It is developing methods to improve treatment concepts, laboratory processes, and materials for environmental applications. The pilot plant reactor of the double-nozzle FSP has been designed and developed in collaboration with ETH Zurich, and it is capable of producing: [i] nano-oxides (sizes from 100 nm to < 2 nm) and metal nanocatalysts, on a routine basis at a rate of g/hour, and [ii] catalytic/reducing oxides and transition phases via Reducing FSP, that cannot be produced by conventional liquid methods. The lab-scale FSP reactor can produce grams of nano-materials per hour, while the scale-up FSP reactor can produce higher quantities, of kgr/h on a routine basis. In addition, the laboratory has research expertise and work in environmental catalysis using new materials, development of toxic metals- specializing in arsenic, dealing with gaseous pollutants (NOx), as well as with the production of environmentally friendly fuels, such as H2 resulting from the photocatalytic splitting of water of dehydrogenation of HCOOH at low temperatures (<80oC at 1 bar).