University of Ghent
Ghent University (UGent) distinguishes itself as a socially committed and pluralistic university that is open to all students and defines itself in a broad international perspective. Ghent University aims to encourage its students to adopt a critical approach within a creative, development-oriented educational and research environment and offers a broad spectrum of high-quality research-based educational programmes that are constantly being adapted to the most recent scholarly and scientific developments. Ghent University aims to promote and further develop fundamental independent research in all faculties and to be a world player in the selected fields of endeavour.
UGent is involved in BASE through the Department of Textiles which is an integrated part of the Faculty of Engineering. It is a modern academic entity offering university education and training and carrying out fundamental and applied scientific research. It also provides technical-scientific service and assistance to the textile industry and the textile users. The department develops and applies electrospinning technology that allows production of fibres with nanometer dimensions in a controlled way. It allows for production of individual (1D) nano-fibres and non-woven coatings and films (2D, at random and in a controlled pattern). In addition, it will develop a setup for electrospinning from the melt phase of polymers as an extension of the classically done electrospinning from polymer solutions in combination with investigation of developing peptide nano-coatings for those substrates. The following methods are used to characterise their obtained nano-structures: XPS, SEM and AFM (structure analysis), electrochemical methods (study of chemical and electrochemical properties), tensile tests (study of mechanical properties), DSC, MDSC, TMA and TGA (study of thermal properties) and spectroscopic techniques such as FT-Raman and FT-IR.