We are pleased to invite you to a Mini-Symposium on Alternative Theories of Gravity and Cosmology featuring two invited speakers from Mexico. The event will take place at Institute of Physics PAS, allowing for two talks and plenty of time for extended discussions.
The Warsaw Doctoral School in Natural and Biomedical Sciences and the Institute of Physical Chemistry PAS cordially invites you to a Advanced Lecture Series – BIOLOGY-INSPIRED CHEMISTRY talk.
The talk is given by dr. Mariana Kozłowska (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute of Nanotechnology, Germany).
When and where?
on 12th December 2024, 10:00 am at IChF Aula
Duration: 60 min + question time
Talk abstract
An interesting concept, permitting the study of a variety of new photophysical phenomena is based on the assembly of modulated light- and electron-responsive materials. Three-dimensional structure of such materials is often driven by noncovalent interactions that control intermolecular interaction patterns and condensed state geometries. However, the resultant optoelectronic response may also be significantly impacted by the vibrational flexibility of molecules in an assembly. The prediction of noncovalent interactions, the control of supramolecular assembly and the consideration of materials’ dynamics are challenging, limiting further modification of molecules for new materials with desired photoinduced properties.
In my talk, I will demonstrate the application of multiscale modeling and automated workflow tools for understanding the assembly of functional organic molecules in pillar-layered and surface-anchored metal-organic frameworks. I will explain the prediction of their photoconductive, photoswitchable and chiroptical properties, as well as the molecular bases of light-induced phenomena and the influence of noncovalent interactions and molecular motions.
This event is supported by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, grant no. BPI/STE/2021/1/00034/U/00001
The Warsaw Doctoral School in Natural and Biomedical Sciences and the Institute of Organic Chemistry PAS cordially invites you to a Advanced Lecture Series.
The talk is given by Professor Dr. Holger F. Bettinger (University of Tübingen, Germany).
Agenda
Reactive intermediates are central to the understanding of chemical reactions. Due to their short lifetime their detailed study is challenging. One method that allows convenient study of highly reactive species is cryogenic matrix isolation. Here, reactive molecules or their precursors are frozen out in a large excess of inert gas (mostly argon, but also neon, krypton or xenon can be employed). This precludes intermolecular reactions and provides an environment for the spectroscopic study of the entrapped molecules. Typically, infrared spectroscopy, UV/vis spectroscopy and electroparamagnetic spectroscopy are employed for the analysis. The method is also well suited for the study of weak intermolecular interactions, e.g., hydrogen bonding, dative interactions etc. I will present the method and some of its seminal applications in the student lectures before reporting our own work in this area and its interconnection to the development of novel materials for energy storage.
When and where?
LECTURE SERIES: November 21, 2024 (Thursday) – conference room IOC PAS, Warsaw, Kasprzaka 44/52
3:00 – 4:30 pm, Lecture 1: The study of reactive intermediates with the matrix isolation technique.
4:45 – 6:15 pm, Lecture 2: Organic and organometallic diradicaloids studied by matrix isolation.
OPEN LECTURE:November 22, 2024 (Friday)– 10 am – aula IOC/ICP PAS, Warsaw, Kasprzaka 44/52 “Boron-nitrogen heterocycles for energy storage”Professor Dr. Holger F. Bettinger
About the lecturer
Professor Dr. Holger F. Bettinger was born in Nördlingen, Germany, in 1970. He studied chemistry at the Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and graduated in 1998 with a Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Paul von Ragué Schleyer. After postdoctoral research at the University of Georgia (Athens, GA, USA), Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany) and Rice University (Houston, Texas, USA), he started his independent research group at Bochum in 2001 and achieved habilitation in organic chemistry in 2005. Since 2008 he is professor at the Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, where he currently acts as director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry. His research interests include reactive molecules of organic and organometallic nature as well as their use as building blocks in organic materials. He received a number of awards among them an ERC Synergy Grant, and is author of more than 190 papers.
This event is supported by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, grant no. BPI/STE/2021/1/00034/U/00001
The potential energy landscape provides a conceptual and computational framework for investigating structure, dynamics and thermodynamics in atomic and molecular science.
This lecture will summarise recent developments for global optimisation, enhanced sampling, and rare event dynamics.
A variety of recent applications will be presented including proteins, nucleic acids, coarse-grained models, and design principles for self-assembly of mesoscopic structures, with recent results for global kinetics based on first passage time distributions.
This event is supported by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, grant no. BPI/STE/2021/1/00034/U/00001.
About the speaker
David J. Wales received his BA degree from Cambridge University in 1985, PhD in1988, and ScD in 2004. He was a Lindemann Trust Fellow in 1989, a Research Fellow at Downing College Cambridge in 1990, a Lloyd’s of London Tercentenary Fellow in 1991, and a Royal Society University Research Fellow from 1991 to 1998. In 1998 he was appointed to a Lectureship in Cambridge and is now Professor of Chemical Physics and Chair of the Theory group. He was awarded the Cambridge University Norrish Prize for Chemistry and the Gonville and Caius College Schuldham Plate in 1985, the Meldola Medal and Prize in 1992 and the Tilden Prize in 2015, both by the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was a Baker Lecturer at Cornell University in 2005, the Inaugural Henry Frank Lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh in 2007, Distinguished Lecturer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA in 2018, and was awarded a Visiting Miller Professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, for 2020. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2016. In 2020 he became the inaugural recipient of the ICReDD Award from Hokkaido University and received a Humboldt Research Prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is an Honorary Professor at the University of Warwick for 2022-2025, Infosys Distinguished Visiting Professor, Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad, 2023, and Distinguished Visiting Professor, New York University, 2024. His research primarily involves the exploration of energy landscapes, with applications to chemical biology, spectroscopy, machine learning, clusters, solids and surfaces.
Nitride semiconductors have enabled transformative technologies that have changed the way people live their lives. They are pivotal components of a plethora of optical, electronic, and photonic devices, and their share in the expanding global semiconductor market is growing. Specific technological examples include use as light emitting diodes (LEDs) in solid state lighting, displays and cell phones, and blue to ultraviolet lasers. They also find use in radio-frequency (RF) filters and in bulk and surface acoustic wave resonators and transistor amplifiers in the form of high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs).
The ability to expand the chemistry and functionality of nitride semiconductors opens up new technological platforms. In this talk, I will discuss avenues to enhance the functionality and utilization of the nitride materials family by alloying with novel transition metals to generate novel properties. New technology spaces enabled by magnetic, thermoelectric, and superconducting properties from novel nitride materials will be introduced. A specific focus will be on the aspects of electronic response and implications on polarizability of novel nitrides such as aluminum scandium nitride (Al,ScN) and aluminum boron nitride (Al,BN). Highlights of this work include enhanced piezoelectric response and dielectric permittivity in epitaxial layers, ferroelectric HEMT performance, and ferroelectric behavior below 10 nm thickness at back end of line (BEOL) compatible growth temperatures. This emerging research area capitalizes on significant opportunities for materials discovery, heterostructure design, and device simulation and fabrication.
The Warsaw Doctoral School in Natural and Biomedical Sciences and the Institute of Organic Chemistry PAS cordially invites you to a Advanced Lecture Series.
The talk is given by Prof. Tomáš Šolomek (Van‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands).
When and where?
LECTURE SERIES: October 17, 2024 (Thursday) – conference room IOC PAS, Warsaw, Kasprzaka 44/52 2:30 – 4:00 pm, The basics of the electronic structure of organic diradicaloids 4:15 – 5:45 pm, Selected examples of their reactivity accessed by using light or heat Registration at aleksandra.butkiewicz@icho.edu.pl
OPEN LECTURE:October 18, 2024 (Friday) – 10 am – aula IOC/ICP PAS, Warsaw, Kasprzaka 44/52 “Topography and Topology: Unusual Playground for Chromophores”Prof. Tomáš Šolomek
About the lecturer
Tomáš Šolomek was born in Slovakia and chose chemistry as a career due to a passionate chemistry teacher that he had in the high-school. He obtained his Bachelor and Master’s degrees in organic photochemistry at the Masaryk University, Czechia. In 2014, he completed his PhD degree in chemistry under co-tutorship at the Masaryk University (Prof. Petr Klán) and the University of Fribourg (Prof. Thomas Bally), Switzerland, combining experiments and theory to understand the nature of reactive intermediates generated by light or heat. He then became an Experientia Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of Basel with Prof. Michal Juríček. From 2015-2017, he was a Swiss National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University (USA) in the group of Prof. Michael Wasielewski. Dr. Šolomek founded his independent research group at the University of Basel as a fellow of the Ambizione program of the Swiss National Science Foundation (2018), exploring porous covalent organic cages with built-in photo- and redox-active units. After receiving an ERC Starting grant TOPOCLIP (2021), he became a non-tenure track assistant professor at the University of Bern, where his team worked on the stable molecular representations of topologically complex carbon nanostructures. From January 2023, Dr Šolomek became a tenure-track assistant professor at Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences in Amsterdam. In his research, Tomáš Šolomek aims to improve the design of more efficient and sustainable organic optoelectronic materials and organic photocages. To accomplish this, he blends the synthesis of organic molecules with the use of spectroscopy and computational chemistry.
This event is supported by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, grant no. BPI/STE/2021/1/00034/U/00001
Studies on the photochemical reactivity and characterization of the primary photoproducts permit a deeper understanding of reaction mechanisms. In this talk, the experimental technique of low temperature matrix isolation allowing to experimentally test the incipient steps of photochemical reactions, and to characterize novel species with unusual functionalities, properties and behavior will be addressed.
We shall start with the fundamentals of the method and show its possibilities in the studies of structure and reactivity at cryogenic temperatures (~10 K). Typically, the molecules are embedded in solid inert matrices (Ar, Xe, N2) and excited in situ either by a broadband light source, such as Hg/Xe lamp, or by narrowband light generated in an optical parametric oscillator or in a diode laser. The structures of reactants and photoproducts are characterized experimentally by infrared spectroscopy and theoretically by computation of vibrational spectra.
The potential of the method will be demonstrated using several conformational studies. Narrowband near-infrared irradiations, tuned at the frequencies of the OH or NH first overtone modes, result in conformational switching. Hereby, it becomes possible to characterize high-energy conformers, not accessible experimentally otherwise, and study processes of intramolecular vibrational energy transfer. The examples will include carboxylic acids, amino acids, nucleobase cytosine, among others. Besides, the isomerizations occurring in matrix-isolated molecules in dark (H-atom and heavy-atom tunneling) and those induced by the light source of the spectrometer will be discussed.
Further examples concern the reactivity induced by frequency-tunable UV light. Here, H-atom transfer reactions, resulting in oxo-hydroxy, amine-imino, thiol-thione isomerism, for phenol, cytosines, thiophenol, and some heterocycles will be described.
In general, this contribution will provide a selection of experimental and computational results, co-authored by the presenter, providing insight into the observed reactivity.
This event is supported by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, grant no. BPI/STE/2021/1/00034/U/00001.
About the speaker
Igor Reva graduated in Biophysics, with honors, from the Kharkiv State University. Upon graduation, worked for several years as engineer, at the Institute for Low Temperature Physics & Engineering (ILTPE), a major research centre of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (in Kharkiv), where he mastered diverse technical aspects of cryogenic applications.
In 1995, completed a PhD degree in Molecular Physics & Biophysics, at ILTPE.
In July 1997 – September 1999, Igor Reva was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at Max-Planck-Institute (MPI) for Radiation Chemistry (Mülheim-an-der-Ruhr, Germany) and MPI for Nuclear Physics (Heidelberg, Germany).
Since October 1999 and until 2020, moved to the University of Coimbra (UC), Portugal, where he worked as: (i) post-doctoral fellow of the Portuguese “Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia” (FCT), (ii) Researcher (FCT program “Science-2007”), (iii) Principal Researcher (program “Investigador FCT”), all above positions at the Centre of Chemistry of Coimbra, Department of Chemistry (DQ) at UC. Since 2021 (till present), Igor Reva works at the Research Centre hosted at the Department of Chemical Engineering (DEQ) at UC. Since 2024, this research centre at DEQ/UC is named CERES (from Portuguese: “Chemical Engineering and Renewable Resources for Sustainability”).
In 2010, the degree of Habilitation in Chemistry was conferred on Igor Reva by UC, with specialization in Molecular Spectroscopy.
The engineering skills and qualification, acquired by Igor Reva at ILTPE, allowed him subsequently to design and construct in Portugal (at DQ/UC) a home-made fully operational experimental setup for matrix-isolation spectroscopy and photochemistry at cryogenic temperatures. This setup is now an integrated part of Coimbra Laser Lab (CLL), hosted at DQ/UC. CLL is a Research Infrastructure of FCT established at UC and is a part of LaserLab Europe – Consortium of European Laser Research Infrastructures (35 organizations from 18 countries). At CLL, Igor Reva provided scientific supervision and technical training for users from +20 countries.
Main specializations of Igor Reva are infrared spectroscopy, photochemistry, photochromic molecules, molecular switches, reactive intermediates, systems with open electronic shells, quantum mechanical tunneling, including their experimental and computational studies.
He participated in +30 competitively funded FCT projects (in 8 as principal investigator). As of September 2024, published +170 articles in peer-reviewed journals, in 1/3 of these Igor Reva is the corresponding author. H-index: 42 (Publons) / 43 (Scopus), with +5 K citations.
Considering the present STER application to NAWA, it should be noted that Igor Reva participated in two bilateral projects with IF PAN, acting as coordinator for the Portuguese side. Each of these two projects lasted two years. Collaborations with researchers from IF PAN resulted in 42 joint peer-reviewed publications.
Solitons show up in many fields of physics from the monopoles and models of nucleons in strong interactions, to conducting plastics and novel memory storage devices. However, solitons are largely understood using classical physics. It is widely believed that quantum mechanics qualitatively changes some of their properties, for example causing some to quickly decay. We will describe a new method which allows for an efficient, reliable and complete treatment of solitons in quantum physics.
In the second lecture, we will describe some recent progress in constructing quantum kinks. We will describe how states, decay rates and scattering amplitudes may be found. Also we will introduce oscillons, which are thought to be the dominant degrees of freedom after violent events including some first order phase transitions and inflationary paradigms. We will describe how these new methods may be used to understand whether quantum corrections cause oscillons to decay so quickly that they are phenomenologically irrelevant.
This event is supported by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, grant no. BPI/STE/2021/1/00034/U/00001.
About the speaker
Jarah Evslin got his Bachelor of Science degree in Math and Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Caltech in 1997, he got his PhD degree in Physics from the University of California Berkeley in 2001. After that he did his postdocs in Pisa, Trieste and Brussels. Later he became an adjunct professor at the University of Pisa.
Since 2014, he is a professor at the Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is the coordinator of the International Science Development Team for Fundamental Physics at the Thirty Meter Telescope. He published 112 papers in refereed journals, plus 1 book chapter and 7 proceedings. In the past, he has studied dark matter, dark energy, string theory, black holes and neutrino physics. For the past 5 years, his research has worked towards understanding why gluons and quarks are always confined in nuclei.
Solitons show up in many fields of physics from the monopoles and models of nucleons in strong interactions, to conducting plastics and novel memory storage devices. However, solitons are largely understood using classical physics. It is widely believed that quantum mechanics qualitatively changes some of their properties, for example causing some to quickly decay. We will describe a new method which allows for an efficient, reliable and complete treatment of solitons in quantum physics.
In the first lecture, classical solitons will be introduced. We will give a brief introduction to different kinds of solitons: kinks, vortices, monopoles and domain walls. We will describe them using classical field theory and note some of their applications in classical and quantum physics.
This event is supported by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, grant no. BPI/STE/2021/1/00034/U/00001.
About the speaker
Jarah Evslin got his Bachelor of Science degree in Math and Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Caltech in 1997, he got his PhD degree in Physics from the University of California Berkeley in 2001. After that he did his postdocs in Pisa, Trieste and Brussels. Later he became an adjunct professor at the University of Pisa.
Since 2014, he is a professor at the Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is the coordinator of the International Science Development Team for Fundamental Physics at the Thirty Meter Telescope. He published 112 papers in refereed journals, plus 1 book chapter and 7 proceedings. In the past, he has studied dark matter, dark energy, string theory, black holes and neutrino physics. For the past 5 years, his research has worked towards understanding why gluons and quarks are always confined in nuclei.
The talk is given by Dr. Sérgio Nuno Canteiro de Magalhães (IPFN, Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear, Campus Tecnológico e Nuclear, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Estrada Nacional 10, 2695-066 Bobadela LRS, Portugal).
When and where?
25th June 2024, 10:30 am at the IP PAS Auditorium, duration: 45 min + question time
Recent progress in the growth techniques makes it possible to fabricate low-dimensional structures, e.g., thin films (planar multilayers), mesoscopic structures and nanostructures (lateral surface and multilayer gratings, quantum wires and dots). The opto- and micro-electronics are among the fields where the resulting novel properties of homo(hetero)-epitaxial growth of semiconductors are more significant. The optimization of the fabrication process and the physical understanding of the samples requires non-destructive structural studies of the materials. Improving the properties of the as-grown quantum materials is also fundamental from the point of view of the Nanotechnology. An example of controlled process to change the properties of materials is the ex-situ incorporation of ion species. The possibility to control dopant concentrations, depth profiling and the high purity through mass selection turn ion implantation into a silicon industry ready-to-use tool. However, the stochastic nature of the process in which energetic ions collide and penetrate the semiconductor, results in lattice damage. Although the crystal degradation is partially reversed after thermal or pressure annealing’s, vacancies and point defects introduced and rearranged after annealing create a strain field which does not disappear completely. Complementary to the direct local probing methods (atomic force microscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high angle annular dark field (HAADF) or phase analysis to determine the strain in quantum materials), the X-ray elastic scattering methods probe locally the reciprocal space, thus providing relevant information about the statistical properties of the structural parameters averaged over a large volume of a sample. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and reflectivity (XRR) in the specular and non-specular geometries are relevant techniques for these structural studies of both crystalline and amorphous systems. They are highly sensitive to the distribution of the lattice parameters (diffraction) and refractive index (reflectivity). This presentation explores the synergy between ion beam implantation and X-ray scattering techniques to advance the understanding of implanted crystalline materials. Several examples of implanted single and polycrystalline crystals will be presented following by an overview of the required theoretical principles underlying both techniques. To predict the decrease of the crystalline induced by the ion implantation, a new approach to the interpretation of the diffraction data of implanted crystals will be presented. The novel methodology considers the effects of the variations of the atom’s positions in the lattice instead of employing the static Debye-Waller, strictly related to thermal vibrations. The new method, supported by preliminary molecular dynamics simulations, is tentatively applied to chromium implanted Ga2O3 and carbon implanted 4H-SiC bulk-crystals and to argon implanted GaN thick layers grown by MOCVD on sapphire-c substrates. Finally, a brief description of the MROX software, acronym for Multiple Reflection Optimization package for X-ray scattering used to simulate the XRD data, is highlighted.
This event is supported by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, grant no. BPI/STE/2021/1/00034/U/00001.
About the speaker
Sérgio Nuno Canteiro de Magalhães (ORCID number: 0000-0002-5858-549X; Web of Science ResearcherID: A-6709-2018) is a DL57 researcher under the 16/IPFN contract at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal. This contract was awarded for the development of models aimed at studying the effects of ion-implanted nano-materials using X-rays and ion beams.
Sérgio Magalhães’s journey into the realm of crystal growth began with the exploration of recent advancements in techniques, which have revolutionized the creation of low-dimensional structures. These structures, encompassing thin films, mesoscopic forms, and nanostructures, hold immense significance for Condensed Matter Physics, particularly in opto- and micro-electronics. Their uniqueness stems from the epitaxial growth of semiconductors, facilitated by cutting-edge crystal growth methods.
Sérgio Magalhães’s fascination with enhancing the attributes of these materials led to delve into the realm of Nuclear Sciences. Here, Sérgio Magalhães discovered the pivotal role of controlled processes in modifying materials, particularly through ex-situ incorporation of ion species. This method allows for precise manipulation of dopant concentrations, depth-profiling, and ensuring high purity through mass selection, thereby positioning ion implantation as a key tool for integration into the silicon industry. However, the journey is not without its challenges. On the on hand, the stochastic nature of ion implantation brings forth lattice damage as energetic ions interact and penetrate the semiconductor lattice. While thermal or pressure annealing offers partial relief, the introduction of vacancies and point defects during this process leaves behind residual strain fields that persist beyond annealing. On the other hand, the advanced measurements acquired from X-ray scattering and ion beam techniques demand equally sophisticated computer software tools to simulate their data. In response to this need, the MROX (Multiple Reflection Optimization) package for X-ray diffraction/reflection software has been recently developed. It should be emphasized that program made by Sérgio Magalhães allows to simulate XRD data of advanced semiconductor structure systems (superlattices, nanowires, quantum-dots, thin layers, ion implanted structures) what is impossible in commercial available XRD software. Already, MROX program has been credited in 16 research manuscripts published in reputable international peer-reviewed journals. Driven by the quest to unravel these complexities and enhance material properties, Sérgio Magalhães embarked on a mission to conduct non-destructive structural investigations. Leveraging X-ray and ion beam techniques, Sérgio Magalhães’s goals are to gain deeper insights into the mechanisms of damage accumulation in crystals. The success has been bolstered by over 60 research publications, facilitated by numerous international collaborations, including partnerships with esteemed institutions such as the Institute of Physics at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
