Prof. Rafael Alvarez

Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Sevilla, Spain
Dr. Rafael Alvarez got his PhD in Physics from the University of Córdoba (Spain) in 2005. He conducted his postdoctoral research at the Institute of Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion in Lisbon (Portugal) from 2005 to 2008, where he specialized in plasma physics and plasma simulation. In 2008 he became a researcher at the Institute of Materials Science in Seville (ICMS), where he started his own research line within the Nanotechnology on Surfaces and Plasma research group, dedicated to the application of plasmas to the deposition of nanostructured thin films. Since 2017 he is also a member of the Department of Applied Physics I at the University of Seville, where he holds a tenured position as Assistant Professor. His research has been recognized by the Spanish Scientists Association (AEC) with the honorary plaque for the best Spanish researcher under 40 years old, as well as by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Community of Madrid with the IDEA2 award for the best biomedical innovation project. He has also received the Manuel Losada Villasante Award on Research in Innovation.

Talk title: Porous nanocolumnar thin films deposited at glancing angles: fundamentals and applications
The magnetron sputtering technique operated at oblique geometries has recently emerged as an invaluable tool for the deposition of porous thin films. Not only has it managed to reproduce similar film morphologies as those obtained by classical evaporation methods at glancing angles, but, by fine tuning the plasma conditions during deposition, it has also widened the variety of available nanostructures, e.g.  well-isolated nanocolumnar arrays, sponge-like structures or even compact films that embed porous networks with different connectivity. Furthermore, the use of patterned substrates has broadened even more the nanostructuring possibilities of the technique, allowing the direct growth of well-ordered arrays of pillars or hole structures in scales of about 100 nm, among many other possibilities (see figure 1). In this presentation, an up to date description of its fundamentals and possibilities are shown, along with numerous potential applications in different fields. Their use in the development of sensors devices, in which the high specific surface of these coatings optimizes the interaction with an external gas or liquid, or in biomedicine, where a nanocolumnar biocompatible antibacterial thin film has been recently reported, will be specifically addressed in this presentation.