11/25/2025
By Zhiyong Gu

Hilal Goktas, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Ankara University, Turkey, will give a seminar titled, "Development of Functional Thin Films and Surface Architectures Using Dry Deposition Methods for Biomedical Applications"

Date: Monday, Dec. 1
Time: 10 to 11 a.m.
Location: Southwick Hall, Room 240

Abstract: Biomaterials are fundamental to contemporary medical technology, providing the foundation for a broad spectrum of interventions aimed at improving, restoring, or replacing impaired biological functions. In recent years, their significance has expanded through the integration of biofunctional properties not only into metallic biomaterials but also into ceramic and polymeric systems. These enhancements enable applications in controlled drug delivery, regenerative medicine, and antimicrobial and antifouling technologies by creating an intelligent interface between biological (biosis) and non-biological (abiosis) environments. Achieving such functionality necessitates precise control over surface chemistry, topography, mechanical properties, and degradation kinetics, requirements that cannot typically be met through conventional manufacturing methods. Surface modification, therefore, plays a critical role, and the associated post-fabrication processes can be broadly categorized into wet and dry techniques. Dry processing methods, such as plasma treatment, plasma polymerization, and chemical vapor deposition (CVD), offer solvent-free, single-step approaches capable of altering the surface composition, structure, and morphology or facilitating the immobilization of bioactive molecules onto a wide variety of substrates. This seminar will present our recent research on the synthesis, characterizations, and application of functional thin films produced through dry processing techniques, with a particular focus on their antifouling, antimicrobial, and anticoagulant properties.

Biography: Professor Hilal Göktaş received his Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from Middle East Technical University in 1992, 1996, and 2001, respectively. He subsequently joined the Turkish Atomic Energy Agency as a senior physicist, where he conducted research on high-temperature plasmas until 2005. Between 2006 and 2013, he served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, focusing on low-temperature plasma research. He was a Research Affiliate in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 2013 to 2016 and later served as an ORISE Fellow at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Winchester. Since 2019, he has been a faculty
member in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Ankara University, Turkey.

The research activities in Göktaş’s laboratory focus on the design and fabrication of plasma and vapor deposition systems; the synthesis of functional polymeric nanoparticles, thin films, and interfacial structures; and the investigation of molecular binding mechanisms and interactions with surrounding chemical environments. These efforts support a range of applications, including sensor technologies (biosensors and gas sensors), smart and antimicrobial materials, as well as biomedical and optoelectronic devices.