PhD Position Title
PhD candidate: top-down covalent adaptable and circular epoxy networks
You are a highly motivated researcher with a MSc degree in chemistry, holding skills in organic and polymer synthesis. You are willing to collaborate closely with both public and private partners on the development of top-down covalent adaptable and circular epoxy networks.
PhD Position Summary
The European Green Deal is driving a shift towards a circular economy by 2050, challenging polymer science to revolutionize thermoset recycling. This project pioneers a completely new approach to make widely available epoxy-amine networks (e.g. wind mill blades) recyclable, while they are normally not recyclable. The key is a transformation of a bond present in the network to another bond with so-called reversible behavior upon a trigger (e.g. temperature), what makes recycling possible. This breakthrough in epoxy-amine recycling will be validated on coatings and composites.
The PhD student will be appointed at the Aachen-Maastricht Institute for Biobased Materials of Maastricht University, which is part of the Faculty of Science and Engineering. The part on model studies will be supervised by dr. Jordy Saya and Prof. Romano Orru from the Biobased Organic Chemistry group. For the polymer part of the project, you will work in the Sustainable Polymer Synthesis group of Associate Professor Katrien Bernaerts, which focusses on the synthesis and design of polymer materials with tunable properties and recyclability exploiting the functionality of biobased building blocks. You will operate from the Brightlands-Chemelot Campus in Geleen (Nl), where the labs are located.
Eligibility and requirements
The PhD student
- holds a MSc degree in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering or related fields;
- has strong skills in organic synthesis, polymer synthesis and chemical characterization;
- has interest in the material characterization of covalent adaptable networks (rheology, DMA, tensile test, …);
- has a strong interest to investigate structure-property relationships of the recycled networks;
- is open to scale up materials for application tests by the company involved in the project, namely Westlake;
- takes care of profound scientific publishing in peer review journals, if appropriate after patenting the work first;
- likes to interact with academic and industrial partners;
- is result driven, inventive, creative, counts with potential impact, works ‘accountable’ and works with ownership;
- masters scientific English for speaking, reading, and writing. Knowledge of Dutch is not required.
Our Offer
As a PhD at the Faculty of Science & Engineering, you will be employed by the most international university in the Netherlands, with work location Sittard-Geleen. In addition, we offer you:
- Good employment conditions. The position is graded according to UFO profile PhD, with corresponding salary from €2872,00 in the first year and €3670,00 gross per month in the fourth year (based on a full-time employment of 38 hours per week). In addition to the monthly salary, an 8.0% holiday allowance and an 8.3% year-end bonus apply.
- An employment contract for a period of 12 months with a scope of 1.0 FTE. Upon a positive evaluation, an extension of 3 years will follow.
- The start of the project is foreseen for November 1, 2024.
- At Maastricht University, the well-being of our employees is of utmost importance, we offer flexible working hours and the possibility to work partly from home if the nature of your position allows it. You will receive a monthly commuting and internet allowance for this. If you work full-time, you will be entitled to 29 vacation days and 4 additional public holidays per year, namely carnival Monday, carnival Tuesday, Good Friday, and Liberation Day. If you choose to accumulate compensation hours, an additional 12 days will be added. Furthermore, you can personalize your employment conditions through a collective labor agreement (CAO) choice model.
- As Maastricht University, we offer various other excellent secondary employment conditions. These include a good pension scheme with the ABP and the opportunity for UM employees to participate in company fitness and make use of the extensive sports facilities that we also offer to our students.
- Last but certainly not least, we provide the space and facilities for your personal and professional development. We facilitate this by offering a wide range of training programs and supporting various well-established initiatives such as ‘acknowledge and appreciate’.
Application Deadline
Dec 31, 2024
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