Towards Reality in Nanoscale Materials '08

Following the 2007 workshop "Towards reality in nanoscale materials", the main focus of the 2008 workshop is on the defects and irradiation-induced phenomena in nanoscale materials.

• Defects in nano-structured carbon materials - including the study of how mechanical and electronic properties of nano-structured carbon materials are influenced by defects.
• Defect creation - studies of doped and irradiated nanoscale materials.
• Surface chemistry at the nanoscale - particular emphasis will be placed on those systems where defects and impurities clearly dominate reactive properties.
• Defect control - beyond just studying and understanding the properties of defects and impurities, we wish to explore avenues of atomic scale control: charging; optical excitation; mechanical manipulation. This direction leads to the possibility of tailoring the electronic structure of nanoscale systems.
• Methods - application of first principles methods to atomistic modeling of non-ideal nanoscale materials. Including advanced approaches for studying excited states and very large systems.

The workshop consists of invited and contributed talks as well as posters and short poster talks. There will be no conference paper, but an abstract book will be provided. Although the majority of invited and contributed speakers will be from theory, several invited experts will cover recent progress in relevant experimental areas.

See the workshop poster (png).

The workshop will be held in Levi (Hotel K5) in Finnish Lapland from Wednesday 2008-12-03 to Friday 2008-12-05. There are flights from Helsinki to the nearby airport of Kittilä by Finnair (every day) and Blue 1 (Wed 2008-12-03 12:45, return Fri 2008-12-05 20:10). Scheduled buses meet every flight to Kittilä, and it takes about 10-15 minutes to reach Levi. If the flight schedule does not allow you to catch the connecting flight to Kittilä on the same day, you may consider having a stop-over in Helsinki and fly to Kittilä next day. Alternatively, you can fly to Rovaniemi (about 200 km away from Levi), then take a bus (the buses leave from the Rovaniemi bus station at 11:30, 15:30, and 17.00, it takes about 2 and half hours to reach Levi). You can also rent a car at the Rovaniemi airport and drive to Levi (we guarantee no traffic jams, but there may be reindeer on the road). This could be a very good option if several people arrive with the same flight.

Check the visitors' map of Levi (Hotel K5 is item 3) or an interactive map.

For those interested there are full facilities for both downhill and cross country skiing in Levi.

The long-time average temperature in Levi in December is about -10 C (15 F). The record high and low temperatures are about +5 and -40 C (+40 and -40 F). The length of day is only a few hours.
Check the current 5-day forecast for Kittilä.

Please, also see photos from last year's workshop.

We thank the Academy of Finland, the National Graduate School in Materials Physics, the National Graduate School in Nanoscience, the European Science Foundation and the University of Helsinki for support.

• Participation fee - Participation is free. However, the number of participants is limited. If more applications are received than the conference facilities allow, the participants will be chosen based on their abstract and its relevance to the workshop. Priority will be given to students and young post-docs.
• Accommodation expenses - The organizers are planning to cover in part the accommodation and catering expenses for the participants. Depending on the number of people, the participants may be asked to cover a part of their accomodation costs (at maximum 200 €).

Registration is closed. Please contact the organizers if you have any questions or requests.

More detailed daily schedules are found by clicking on the dates. The abstracts can be read by clicking on the names of the speakers. For the abstracts of the poster presentations, see the abstract book. A printed copy of the book will be provided to all participants, so you need not print one yourself.