Michael Buhagiar graduated cum laude with a joint Master of Science degree in nanoscience and nanotechnology from KU Leuven, Belgium and Université Grenoble Alpes, France.

The two-year Master programme is offered as part of the Erasmus Mundus cooperation, a European initiative bringing top European universities together to offer joint international Master programmes.

The topic of the dissertation was concerned with improving the performance of electronic devices known as micro-supercapacitors (MSCs), which are being touted as potential replacements for batteries in small electronic devices such as biomedical implants.

MSCs typically contain two carbon-based electrodes with a very large surface area that can store charge physically on its surface and charge/discharge in a very short amount of time. The major drive in this field is to improve the energy density of these devices whilst maintaining their already high power densities. In this dissertation, a novel approach using electrodes based on graphene (a one-atom thick material made from carbon) that is oriented vertically to the substrate was used. This is advantageous because it provides a readily accessible large active surface area to store charge despite a very small device geometry.

This work was partly funded by the Malta Government Scholarship Scheme Post-Graduate, which provides Maltese students with the opportunity to pursue further studies both locally and abroad.