Departments Seminar Program (Webinars) - Dr Emmanouel Simianakis

Περίληψη

In this presentation, I shall discuss three “pet” projects. These are the results of side work, apart from official commitments, on intriguing questions that were posed to me be friends and colleques through the years. The first project is a discussion that starts from the investigation of an unknown contribution on the valence band of Cl/Ti(0001) system and lead to the identification of catalytic descriptors for the Ziegler Natta catalysts used for the production of olefins. In the second project I will discuss how the investigation of the surface termination of rhombohedral and orthorhombic structures of LaMnO₃ powders by Low Energy Ion Scattering (LEIS) became the reference point for the mergence of DFT results, XPS and electrochemical measurements. The unexpected results raises questions on the methods widely applied for the synthesis of catalytic materials used, for the investigation of fundamental catalytic properties. In the third discussion I shall address a fundamental question regarding the H/Ni system which is one of the best studied and understood systems today. I will attempt to explain the desorption of subsurface hydrogen at temperatures above room temperature that is known to occur in the case on Ni crystals with a face termination of 110.

Σύντομο Βιογραφικό Ομιλητή

Dr. Emmanouil Symianakis received his bachelors and Masters in Physics from the department of Physics, University of Ioannina and his Phd (2010) from the department of Chemical Engineering from the University of Patras. He specialized in experimental catalytic surface science and molecular dynamics simulations of metal and metal oxide interfaces and was supervised by Prof. S.  Ladas and Prof. G. E. Evagelakis. He then had a short stay at the departments of Physics University of Patra where he received training with Density Functional Theory calculations methods (Prof. A. Zdetsis). Following that he obtained several postdoc positions at the department of Materials, Imperial College London (Prof. John Kilner). At the department of Chemistry, Imperial College London in the group of Prof. Anthony Kucernak and later in the group of Prof. Tom Welton. In 2015 he returned in Greece and he remained in Patra where he collaborated for several years with the groups of Prof. S. Ladas and Prof. V. Mavratzas. Since 2021 he has received an appointment as a school teacher in secondary education and he remains in Patra.