The first year of the Lendület project that finances our group ended on 30 June, 2013. It is now time to review what has been achieved. The single most important result is that the group has become fully operational. More details follow below.

• Personnel: one predoctoral researcher and one full-time lab assistant are paid from this project. Additionally, two more predoctoral researchers, three PhD students and several undergraduates work actively under my supervision on topics related to the project.
• Infrastructure: the Lendület financing allowed us to make major improvements to our research infrastructure. We bought a new GC-MS, an infrared imaging system, a rapid visible imaging system, a gas flow control system, a new measurement cell and some more bits and pieces. The most important items (GC-MS and the imaging systems) arrived in Spring 2013. They are installed, operational and are currently being integrated into the complex test bench envisioned in the original Lendület proposal. It is worth noting 77.8% of the total project financing was spent on new instruments in the first project year.
• Published results: 13 papers were published (or accepted for publication until June 30, 2013) in SCI journals for a total impact factor of 31.4. Moreover, I co-authored 3 chapters in the new Springer Handbook of Nanomaterials (ISBN 9783642205941) which will be out in printed form in August 2013, and 5 papers in the Recent Developments in Coordination, Bioinorganic and Applied Inorganic Chemistry, published by the Slovak Technical University Press (ISBN 9788022739184). Group members have participated at several conferences in Hungary and abroad. They presented 24 oral contributions and 14 posters. All in all, the publication indicators given in the original Lendület proposal were met. 
• Dissemination: the group was in the news 6 times and I have given 4 introductory talks to non-specialists in the first project year. The group homepage and our Facebook page are active since October 2012. The entry with the highest visibility has been seen by over 200 people. Google Analytics tells me that our homepage was visited by 1187 people in the first project year. The 5th Szeged International Workshop on Advances in Nanoscience, an international conference attended by over 180 colleagues from over 30 countries and organized by our department and vice-chaired by myself has also helped in directing the spotlight on our research group. 
• Additional financing: 38% of the total external financing expected by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has been secured by members our group in the first project year.  The M-ERA.NET project will give us additional funding which will be reported in the second year report. Our group has submitted 6 more project proposals in the first year which were not supported.

Summarizing, the first year was a busy one for the MTA-SZTE “Lendület” Porous Nanocomposites Research Group. I believe that we are on the right track and that we will be able to continue delivering high quality research results. Have a nice summer everyone!

Our guest from the Unviersity of Oulu (originally from the National Taiwan University), Jhih-Fong Lin gave a nice presentation about his research on Friday afternoon. He works on growning carbonaceous structures on mesoporous transition metal substrates, and he performed thermogravimetric and nitrogen adsorption characterization measurements in our lab. His seminar was attended by 16 members of our group - a good result considering that it's the middle of the summer holiday here in Hungary :)

It looks like we can finally enjoy the fruits of our hard work this summer: our paper "Metal loading determines the stabilization pathway for Co2+ in titanate nanowires: ion exchange vs. cluster formation" was accepted for publication in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physical yesterday, The paper was managed by Prof. János Kiss and the first author is Dániel Madarász, one of our PhD students. We report on an interesting phenomenon, namely, that cobalt can stabilize by two different methods on titanate nanotubes depending on the metal loading. The current reference is Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., DOI:10.1039/C3CP51502H.

We have good news to report in the middle of the summer: our paper "Water sorption-induced dielectric changes in titanate nanowires" by Henrik Haspel et al. was accepted for publication in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C. This is a very nice, informative work that includes a detailed literature overview and reports a considerably amount of our own measurements as well. 

Good news: I was informed by the M-ERA.NET Call Secretariat that our proposal “VOCSENSOR” was selected for funding. The project is about developing gas sensors, therefore, it is 100% related to the objectives of our “Lendület” research group. The research consortium consists of partners from Taiwan, Spain, Finland and Hungary. In accordance with the M.ERA-NET scheme rules, the Hungarian funding will be provided by OTKA. It will take a few months to get all the paperwork sorted out, but at the end, we will be funded by approx. 15 million HUF total for this 3 year project. I’ll keep the blog updated about the contract negotiation status.

I have given a talk about the basics of nanotechnology on Friday, 5th July 2013 at the National Teacher Training Workshop organized by the Hungarian Chemist Association. The audience consisted of approx. 40 high school chemistry teachers. The slides of the talk were distributed to them at the workshop. These slides mention both the MTA-SZTE “Lendület” Porous Nanocomposites Research Group and the link to the group homepage.