Topic outline

  • Welcome to Personal Research Assignments in Functional Materials

    The compulsory prerequisites are CHEM-E5140 Materials Characterization laboratory + two of the following obligatory theory courses for Functional Materials major:  CHEM-E4155, CHEM-E4105, CHEM-E5150, CHEM-E5160, CHEM-C3410 (or students starting 2019 or earlier: CHEM-E5120)

    NOTE! Due to continuously changing coronavirus situation, some works may become fully/partly literature and/or data analysis, modelling etc. works which can be done remotely. However, we try to keep as much experimental part as possible. Your supervising professor has the last word in this.


    In this course student will choose an interesting research topic and perform the work in one of the research groups of Functional Materials:

    Prof. Mady Elbahri (Nanochemistry and Nanoengineering)
    Prof. Sami Franssila (Micro- and nanofabrication)
    Prof. Simo-Pekka Hannula (Advanced materials)
    Prof. Jari Koskinen (Advanced thin films)
    Prof. Roman Nowak (Nanomechanics, Nordic Hysitron Laboratory)
    Prof. Jaana Vapaavuori (Smart Functional Materials)

    In general, this course can be taken throughout the year.

    Once you have started the project, you have 1-4 months to finish it (i.e. submit the final report). Delaying the work may result in the reduction in grade.

    NOTE also that the absolutely final deadline for report submission to MyCourses is

    31st July 2021

    The grade of reports submitted after this deadline will be automatically reduced by 1 grade (i.e. if your supervisor gives you grade 5 but you submitted the report to MyCourses after 31st July 2021, the final grade is 4, etc.)


    To be able to pass this course, please

    1) Choose an interesting topic from the list at the wiki,  shown in Topics section.

    2) Contact the contact person (professor/researcher) of the research topic in question: the contact person will tell you more details of the project and  timetable

    3) Reserve the topic for yourself so that the other students know the topic is reserved and they do not contact the supervisor / professor for no reason. (Reserve by using Edit tool to in Wiki).

    4) After you have performed the research assignment, analyse your results and submit a written report in MyCourses (" Reports" -section). The report should be written in English and using the provided Report Format. Remember, plagiarism is not allowed, you are NOT allowed to copy any text  from any type of source (not even one sentence).

    5) Inform your supervisor of the submitted report by email and he/she will grade it. After each semester, the students who have passed the course during that semester will get their study credits.

    6) Any problems or questions, you can contact the responsible teacher (currently: Sami Franssila)

    A list of topics can be found in Mycourses "Topics".

    You can also suggest your own research topic to the professor whose research field is closest to your topic. If the assignment is done somewhere else (other than in the groups of aforementioned professors), the student must present a short work plan for Functional Materials responsible professor BEFORE starting the work (currently Mady Elbahri).


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      You can find the Report Format and Grading Criteria from here, please use this Report Format.