On the 9th of April, the Faculty of Materials Science launched a new educational project – online lecture series course. Twice a week one of famous scientists from the world’s leading universities will tell about the most advanced areas of state-of-the-art materials science.

The first lecture on “The order and how we understand it” was given by Alexei Bosak – the eminent graduate of the Faculty of Materials Science, now a leading researcher of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble (France). This was followed by an online lecture on “Radiation Detection” by Head of the Department of Chemistry and Radiochemistry Department of MSU, prof. S.N. Kalmykov.

So far, 8 invited lectures have taken place from the following scientists: prof. Keith Stevenson (University of Texas in Austin, USA; Scoltech, Russia) "Advanced materials for energy storage: challenges and opportunities"; Ivan Turkevych (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan) “Solar energy and photocatalytic water splitting”, prof. Aron Walsh (Imperial College London, UK) “New Adventures in Materials Modeling”, prof. Yury Gogotsi (Drexel University, USA) “The Rise of MXenes”, Wolfgang Tress (University of Munich, Germany) “Device physics of perovskite solar cells”, prof. Henk Bolink (University of Valencia, Spain) “Vacuum deposition techniques for modern photovoltaics”.

The MSU Gymnasium students participate in the “Flexible electronics” section, where they had presented Grätzel (dye-sensitized) and perovskite-type solar cells based on a flexible substrate. The fabrication of the devices was carried out in the NMSE Lab, whereas during the competition, the team had to improve the devices so that they would meet all the jury requirements.

The first international conference on perovskite photovoltaics (Moscow Autumn Perovskite Photovoltaics International Conference) - “MAPPIC-2019”, was organized by the Laboratory of New Materials for Solar Energetics on the Faculty of Materials Science together with the Department of Chemistry in Moscow State University with the support of the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 19-73-30022) and JSC Krasnoyarsk Hydroelectric Power Station.

The conference was held at the Department of Chemistry in Moscow State University on October 14-15, 2019, and it was attended by more than 60 participants, including members of leading educational and academic centers of Russia, Japan, Switzerland, Italy, Kazakhstan and China, in particular those from Moscow State University, National University of Science and Technology MISiS, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Scientific and Technical Center for Thin-Film Technologies in Power Engineering, Japan National Institute of Advanced Industrial Sciences and Technologies (AIST), Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL), National University of Qing Hua (NTHU), ITMO University, St. Petersburg State University, Eurasian University named after L.N. Gumileva and others.

On October 11, popular science lectures were held in fifty Moscow schools within the framework of a new project held by the All-Russian Science Festival “NAUKA 0+”. The head of the laboratory, Alexey Tarasov and four laboratory members — Aleksei Grishko, Natalia Shlenskaya, Andrey Petrov and Sergey Fateev delivered lectures on solar energetics and talked about the life of young scientists in the field of materials science today. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the discovery of the Periodic Law of chemical elements by Dmitri Mendeleev and the main theme of the Science Festival is dedicated to this anniversary. The event was held with the support of the Department of Education and Science of Moscow city and the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 19-73-30022).

Dr. Alexey Tarasov, Head of the Laboratory of New Materials for Solar Energetics, and Prof. Eugene Goodilin, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Materials Science at Moscow State University and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, became laureates of the Reaxys Award Russia 2019 in the nomination “For a significant contribution to the development of the most actively developing scientific topics in the world”. The award ceremony took place on September 11, 2019 in St. Petersburg at the XXI Mendeleev Congress on General and Applied Chemistry. The prize was established by Mendeleev Russian Chemical Society together with the «Elsevier» company and the nominees were chosen using the SciVal analytical module among 7 clusters of scientific topics actively developing in the field of chemistry.

The XXI Mendeleev Congress on General and Applied Chemistry is held from September 9th to 13th and is one of the key events of the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. The congress was timed to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Dmitri Mendeleev’s discovery of the Periodic Law of Chemical Elements.