Seminar on phase change Materials

Phase Change Materials are currently researched for their potential employment in brain-inspired computing both in electronic and photonic hardware. To fully master their utilization in such applications, though, a comprehensive understanding of their multifaceted physical properties is crucial. Hence, a variety of relevant physical properties are treated in recent scientific publications on this class of materials.

This opens a unique opportunity for a seminar in which students can deepen their understanding of central concepts in solid-state physics by seeing them applied in current real-world research. These are for example: structure and bonding in solids, methods of structure determination, reciprocal lattice, lattice vibrations (phonons), thermal properties of solids, electronic properties of metals and semiconductors, band structures, semiconductor interfaces, optical properties of solids.

While in each session only two students will be responsible for giving a presentation, all students will prepare to actively participate in the following scientific discussion by reading the central scientific publication of that appointment themselves. This way, the participants have repeatedly the chance to train their skills in familiarizing themselves with a physics topic based on original literature. As virtually all current research results in Physics are published in English (both in written articles and at scientific conferences), this also determines the language of this seminar.

The seminar's scope will range from ab-initio (density-functional-theory-based) molecular dynamics, via electronic characterization of nanostructures, pulsed laser excitation, non-linear dynamics, ultra-fast phase transitions, glass formation, all the way to applications in novel computing schemes. This seminar is ideal for students at the beginning of their Physics Master's Program, but can also be interesting to ambitous Bachelor students in Physics in their final year. In the Physics Master's Program this course can serve as a seminar in the "Specialization Module: Materials Physics". Since the course will help students to achieve in-depth knowledge of the structure of matter including its study with state-of-the-art experimental and computational methods, it can also be credited as "Seminar zur Stuktur der Materie".

Finally, participation in this seminar provides students with a good idea of what topics they could investigate in a later thesis project (Bachelorarbeit, Master thesis, etc.) as this field is actively researched at the University of Münster. In fact, this seminar can function as a bridge from general studies to more specialized research providing an optimal preparation for a later Bachelor or Master thesis in this context (AG Salinga, CRC Intelligent Matter).