Anatoly Berezkin, a former CHESS user, is taking his expertise of room temperature annealing to form a startup company in Munich, Germany. The company StoneFlower provides equipment to process high-viscosity pastes into complex 3D shapes using 3D printing. The combination of compatible materials as well as the process is of interest to industry, engineers, and artists.

Anatoly came to CHESS as a postdoc in Christine Papadakis’ group at the Technical University of Munich. In two experimental runs at D-line he explored solvothermal annealing of block copolymers, at this point the most complex annealing method. Solvothermal annealing is an extension of solvent vapor annealing [1] at room temperature which has been studied extensively by the collaborating groups of Christine Papadakis and Dorthe Posselt (Roskilde University, Denmark) over many years at CHESS. For his experiment Anatoly build a novel complex set-up in which sample, chamber, solvents, and even gas leads are kept at the same temperature. His experiments resulted in 3 publications [1-3]. In addition he performed dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulations, a new tool for modelling the kinetics for block copolymer self-assembly. These simulations, performed at the supercomputing center at his alma mater Moscow State University, helped to interpret the experimental findings.

Before and during his postdoctoral followship at the Technical University Munich, Anatoly became interested in additive manufacturing and began building 3d printers in his spare time which would eventually become the core of his start-up company. StoneFlower’s technology is backed by crowd-funding via KickStarter.

 

References

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1771960444/stoneflower-ceramic-3d-printing-kit

[1] Dorthe Posselt, Jianqi Zhang, Detlef-M. Smilgies, Anatoly Berezkin, Igor I. Potemkin, Christine M. Papadakis: "Restructuring in block copolymer thin films: In-situ GISAXS investigations during solvent vapor annealing", Progr. Polymer Sci. 66 (2017) 80–115.

[2] Anatoly V. Berezkin, Florian Jung, Dorthe Posselt, Detlef M. Smilgies, and Christine M. Papadakis: "Vertical vs. Lateral Macrophase Separation in Thin Films of Block Copolymer Mixtures: Computer Simulations and GISAXS Experiments", ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2017, 9, 31291–31301.

[3] Anatoly V. Berezkin, Florian Jung, Dorthe Posselt, Detlef-M. Smilgies, and Christine M. Papadakis: "In Situ Tracking of Composition and Morphology of a Diblock Copolymer Film with GISAXS during Exchange of Solvent Vapors at Elevated Temperatures", Adv. Funct. Mater. 2018, 1706226.