Latest news in this area
An eco-filling to replace down
A hundred years ago, cattail fluff was used as life vest filling – now a Finnish company wants the eco-friendly material for pillows and winter coats.
The MMD research group is mapping the spaces between disciplines
The Multifunctional Materials Design research group (MMD) led by professor Jaana Vapaavuori focuses on experimental studies of soft materials, as well as inorganic-organic hybrids. The group’s ultimate goal is to combine multiple functionalities in the same material. Central to the group’s success are their efforts to stay open to ideas outside their own field, as well as the academic community itself.
Multidisciplinary prototypes on display at the Otaniemi campus
How do innovations of the future emerge? One way is when science meets design.
New LOLS machine learning approach facilitates molecular conformer search in complex molecules
A new machine learning method called LOLS speeds up molecular conformer search in complex molecules
New nanoparticle-based material could help detect antibiotics in water
The finding also opens up new avenues for next-generation flexible wearables and biosensors
Näytös22 fashion show brought a jackpot for Hanna-Lotta Hanhela
With winning three of the four prizes awarded, Master's student in Fashion Hanna-Lotta Hanhela was the most awarded student at the Aalto University’s annual Fashion Show.
Aalto University becomes a founding partner in Ioncell Oy
The new company will commercialise and develop ecological textile fibre technologies.
Reach out and touch it — our researcher explains why getting a feel for things matters
Nowadays, you can do nearly everything digitally, but without touching things you miss out on a dialogue with yourself.
Biorefineries and Herbert Sixta in spotlight at 2022 seminar
Biorefineries research group annual seminar presented the latest developments in forest-based, sustainable refineries and analytical tools.
Professor Emeritus Herbert Sixta: “The most important task of a professor is to educate young people, to help them build their career”
After an extensive career in academia and the forest-based industries, Professor Herbert Sixta has retired. Having worked in Austria for 25 years, Sixta arrived ʵ in 2007, where his research in biorefineries helped create, among other things, the Ioncell process, a technology that turns used textiles, pulp, and paper into new textile fibres sustainably and without chemicals.
African European scientific partnership to tackle future critical materials shortages
A collaborative African European project RESTART dedicated to the implementation of a full value chain for recycling end-of-life lithium-ion batteries and photovoltaic solar panels has begun.
Multifunctional Materials Design: highlights of 2021 and aspirations for 2022
Overview of research group achievements and future plans
Vision 2030: This is what the clothes of the future will look like
Fashion designers turned old hand towels and used work clothes into a sustainable clothing collection.
MMD pre-Xmas event 2021
Multifunctional Materials Design research group's end-of-the-year celebration
New professor Laure Mercier de Lépinay: It is important to stay flexible in our understanding of the world
Laure Mercier de Lépinay I continue to study microwave optomechanics which can allow us to uncover new fundamental physics.
MMD Journal Club
Multifunctional Materials Design research group members present publications from high impact scientific journals
MMD Colloquium 2021
Series of online lectures by international guests at the Multifunctional Materials Design research group meetings
Pilot production line for Ioncell launched — a top made with the stronger-than-cotton ecofibre gets its colour from Finnish fields
In addition to producing the innovative textile fibre, the pilot production line will be used to develop wood-based carbon fibres.
A new layer-by-layer built inorganic-organic material enables optical switching of magnetic properties
Materials chemists have developed a facile process for piling ultrathin inorganic and organic layers in a pre-designed manner into flexible room-temperature thin-film magnets, whose magnetic properties can be controlled with successive external light illuminations.
Finnish researchers developed mini-breast cancer as a new weapon against the most common type of breast cancer
Breast cancer researchers from the University of Helsinki and material scientists from Aalto University have jointly developed a gel-grown “mini-breast cancer” that will help uncover more effective treatments against hormone-dependent breast cancer.
