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Unveiling the Power of Flexoelectricity: A Breakthrough Research Project by Ambizione Awardee, Nikita Shepelin
The search for sustainable energy solutions is of utmost priority in modern society. Overcoming the challenges of energy conversion and storage is critical to reducing dependence on fossil fuels and harnessing renewable sources. Dielectric materials hold great promise for meeting these challenges, but current limitations prevent their widespread use.
Laura Heyderman elected Royal Society Fellow (FRS)
Laura’s nomination recognises almost 30 years of research into magnetic materials and magnetism on the nanoscale.
IEEE Magnetics Society Early Career Award 2023
The IEEE Magnetics Society 2023 Early Career Award goes to Claire Donnelly, a former member of LMX and the Mesoscopic Systems Group, for her excellent work on developing x-ray techniques for imaging magnetic structures in three dimensions.
Appointment of Thomas Lippert as new head of the Laboratory for Multiscale Materials Experiments (LMX)
Starting 1. December 2022, Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas Lippert will be the new head of the Laboratory for Multiscale Materials Experiments (LMX). He follows Prof. Dr. Laura Heyderman, our first laboratory head who successfully formed and established the LMX in the PSI landscape as a Centre of Materials.
TFI goes TecDays
In July 2022, two PhDs of our Thin Films and Interfaces (TFI) Group offered a practical teaching module to pupils at the Kantonsschule Stadelhofen as part of the Swiss TecDays. These are one-day events at Swiss grammar schools, organized by the Schweizerische Akademie der Technischen Wissenschaften (SATW), to support and strengthen technology education at schools. By bringing together pupils and experts from industry, universities, or research institutions, TecDays aims to raise an early awareness for technology and science.
Young Scientist Award 2020
The Young Scientist Award 2020 of the European Magnetism Association (EMA) goes to Claire Donnelly for advances in the experimental characterization of spin textures and their dynamics in three dimensions with X-ray techniques.
Claire Donnelly, a former Ph.D. and postdoc at PSI in the Mesoscopic Systems Group, is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. She received her PhD in 2017 from the ETH Zurich for her work on hard X-ray tomography of three-dimensional magnetic structures based at the Paul Scherrer Institute. Following a postdoc at the ETH Zurich, she moved to the University of Cambridge and the Cavendish in January 2019, where she is focusing on the dynamics of three-dimensional magnetic nanostructures.
Her research focuses on three dimensional magnetic systems, which she studies using sophisticated synchorotron X-rays to determine the three-dimensional magnetic configurations, and their dynamic behaviour, at the nanoscale.
TecDay: LMX meets Hohe Promenade
TecDay is an SATW initiative that was developed at the Kantonsschule Limmattal in 2007 and has since been rolled out to more than 60 secondary schools across Switzerland. By the end of 2017 it had reached around 45,000 students and 5,000 teachers. In December 2019 the LMX contributed in one module, that received a total of 16 students over the course of a morning. The module was organized in three different “stations”, each one focusing on one topic or area that the group is working on.
DGKK Award for young researchers 2019 for Pascal Puphal
Dr Pascal Puphal (currently a Postdoc at PSI, LMX, Solid State Chemistry Group) has recently been awarded with the DGKK young researcher price from the German Crystal Growth Community on his Ph.D. work performed in the group of Cornelius Krellner at the Geothe University Frankfurt am Main on the topic "Tuning two dimensional Cu-based quantum spin systems". The work covers the stabilization and proof of a 2D dimer structure by Sr substitution in Han Purple and the research of novel kagome materials of the prominent quantum spin liquid candidate herbertsmithite by the hydrothermal route.
Claire Donnelly dissertation research awards
In August 2018, Claire Donnelly was awarded the SPS Award in Computational Physics, sponsored by COMSOL, and the Werner Meyer-Ilse Memorial Award. We congratulate her on these awards as well as for the two awards received earlier this year: the ETH Medal for an outstanding doctoral thesis and the American Physical Society Richard L. Greene Dissertation Award, recognizing doctoral thesis research of exceptional quality and importance. These prizes are for her dissertation on “Hard X-ray Tomography of Three Dimensional Magnetic Structures”. Claire carried out her dissertation in the Laboratory for Mesoscopic Systems (ETH Zurich – Paul Scherrer Institute) in collaboration with the CXS group and the OMNY project, with experiments conducted at the cSAXS beamline, SLS, and Sebastian Gliga, a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Glasgow. She will continue this research at the University of Cambridge with a Leverhulme Fellowship supported by the Newton Trust. We wish her every success! - Picture courtesy of the APS.
News 2017
2018 Richard L. Greene Dissertation Award
Claire Donnelly from the Mesoscopic Systems Group has been awarded the 2018 Richard L. Greene Dissertation Award in Experimental Condensed Matter or Materials Physics from the American Physical Society, recognizing doctoral thesis research of exceptional quality and importance. This prize is for her dissertation on “Hard X-ray Tomography of Three Dimensional Magnetic Structures”. Claire conducted her thesis work in collaboration with the CXS group and the OMNY project, with experiments done at the SLS cSAXS beamline
Diving into magnets
A team led by Laura Heyderman has made visible, for the first time, the 3D directions of the magnetisation inside a magnetic object. The smallest details in their visualisation were on the scale of 100 nanometers. Among others, the magnetic structure contained one outstanding kind of pattern: magnetic singularities called Bloch points, which up to now were only known in theory.
4-spin plaquette singlet state in the Shastry–Sutherland compound SrCu2(BO3)2
Scientists from PSI and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have shown experimentally for the first time a quantum phase transition in strontium copper borate, the only material to date that realizes the famous Shastry–Sutherland quantum many-body model.
Extension of solid state chemistry activities
Within a re-organisation NUM concentrates and extends its activities in the field of solid state chemistry (SSC): from July 1 the SSC activities of LDM will be transferred to the new NUM laboratory LMX and two new groups will be created: the group "3703 - Solid State Chemistry" lead by Dr Ekaterina Pomjakushina (upper photo) and the group "3704 - Physical Properties of Materials" lead by Dr Marisa Medarde (lower photo). Both groups are open for collaborations with other PSI research groups. We wish both new group leaders success and satisfaction for their new tasks.
Laura Heyderman new head of the LMX from April 1, 2017
Prof. Dr. Laura J. Heyderman has been appointed as new head of the Laboratory for Multiscale Materials Experiments, LMX, starting April 1, 2017. After her PhD in the field of magnetic thin films at the CNRS in Paris she worked as a Postdoc at the University of Glasgow. Gathering experiences in different industrial research labs she joined PSI in 1999, where she became a group leader in 2008 in the Laboratory for Micro- and Nanotechnology LMN. Laura holds a professorship for Mesoscopic Systems at the ETH Zurich in the Department of Materials and also chairs the PSI research committee.
Thomas Lippert new Editor-in-Chief of Applied Physics A
Prof. Dr. Thomas Lippert has been appointed as new "Editor in Chief" of the journal Applied Physics A. He succeeds Michael Stuke who served Applied Physics A more than 20 years as an Editor in Chief.