Ms. Emma Massasa - Ph.D. Candidate
16/07/2026
אודיטוריום ע"ש דויד וואנג, בניין מידן, קומה 3
13:30
Heterostructure nanoparticles, in which two dissimilar materials form an interface, are intriguing systems. At the nanoscale, heterostructures challenge our bulk understanding of interfaces and can enable emergent properties.
My seminar will focus on new layered heterostructure architectures synthesized in colloidal nanoparticle form, and on how the nanoscale affects material properties. In these systems, the organic component is not only a stabilizer, but also a structural design parameter that can influence nanoparticle formation, architecture, and properties. First, we developed synthetic routes for layered heterostructure nanoparticles composed of inorganic perovskite layers and organic components arranged in controlled architectures. Comparing them with their bulk counterparts allowed us to identify the advantages and limitations of translating layered perovskite structures into nanoparticle form. To examine these architectures from a more fundamental perspective, we then focused on perovskite monolayers as the basic building blocks of layered heterostructures. In these systems, the organic ligand acts as the A-site cation within a single inorganic octahedral layer, making it essential for monolayer formation and stability. Because the perovskite lattice is structurally soft, small changes in the organic moiety strongly affect the monolayer properties. By revealing how the organic component shapes the monolayer building block, this study can help establish design rules for constructing layered heterostructures. We then extended this concept to larger structured proteins. Using SP1, a stable self-assembled protein, we directed the growth of perovskite nanocrystals into nanoplates and enhanced their stability in polar solvents.
Together, these studies show how the organic component can be used as an active structural element to control colloidal perovskite nanostructures, from layered heterostructures to protein-stabilized hybrid nanocrystals.