News & Events
2023
28.10.2023
Nature is experimenting… Saturday, 28 October 2023 at 22.10.
13.9.2023
Yannik Zemp has successfully defended his thesis titled “Trilinear order-parameter coupling in multiferroic materials”. Congratulations, Yannik!
16.8.2023
Martin Sarott has successfully defended his thesis titled “Tailoring ferroelectric domain formation in epitaxial oxide thin films”. Congratulations, Martin!
6.7.2023
Marvin Müller has successfully defended his thesis titled “Time-resolved study of the switching of multiferroic BiFeO3”. Congratulations, Marvin!
1.7.2023
Jan Gerrit Horstmann has received an SNSF Swiss Postdoctoral Fellowship. Within the scope of the project, he will explore optically-induced phase transitions and nonequilibrium dynamics of domains and domain walls in ferroic materials.
28.6.2023
Chia-Jung Yang has successfully defended her thesis titled “Exploring Ultrafast Dynamics of Electrons in Heavy Fermions by THz Time-Domain Spectroscopy”. Congratulations, Chia!
5.6.2023
Our group has been part of the SPINSters ES, the fastest team of the the SOLA relay race, which has been awarded the golden shoe of D-MATL. The team finished a whopping 35th overall in 8:39:13! What a running feat!
17.5.2023
Ipek Efe was selected among a competitive pool of applicants and will receive a financial award given by external pageIEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Society at the upcoming external pageIEEE International Symposium for Application of Ferroelectrics (ISAF), which will be held between 23-27 July in Cleveland, Ohio. At the symposium, she will give a talk about her research on the nanoscale design of layered ferroelectrics using polarization monitoring in-situ. We wish her a great time in Cleveland!
3.4.2023
Marcela Giraldo has successfully defended her thesis titled “Probing Domains and Topological Defects in Ferroics”. Congratulations, Marcela!
20.1.2023
Martin Sarott won the prize for the best presentation for his invited talk at the conference on «Electronic Materials and Applications 2023 (EMA)» in Orlando, organized by the American ceramics society! He is followed by William Huxter from D-PHYS, who was awarded the second best presentation prize. Congratulations to both of you! Both works focus on recent advances in the field of ferroelectric thin films.
17.1.2023
Thomas Weber, the head of the X-ray platform at D-MATL and associated senior scientist to the ferroic group, receives the Will-Kleber Commemorative Coin from the German Society for Crystallography.
The external pageWill-Kleber Commemorative Coin is awarded annually by the external pageGerman Society for Crystallography for outstanding scientific contributions in selected fields of crystallography. Thomas Weber, head of the X-ray platform at D-MATL, receives the award for his methodological work on the study of disordered crystals using diffuse X-ray scattering. D-MATL News
2022
17.11.2022
Manfred Fiebig receives the external pageStern-Gerlach Medal of the German Physical Society (DPG). The external pageStern-Gerlach Medal is DPG's highest distinction in experimental physics.
The German Physical Society awards Manfred Fiebig the medal for the development and application of nonlinear optics as a method for visualizing ferroic states, leading to fundamental advances in the understanding of ferroic states and materials.
1.11.2022
Amadé Bortis has successfully defended his thesis titled “Critical behaviour and domain formation in low-dimensional ferroic systems”. Congratulations, Amadé!
25.10.2022
Cataclysmic event at ETH! Today we were able to observe a partial eclipse outside our offices. Certainly a good omen for much successful research in the future.
03.10.2022
We welcome Eduardo Barriuso Fernández to the group! Barri is a PhD student from the Instituto de Nanociencia y Materiales de Aragón (INMA-CSIC) and will join the PLD group as an academic guest for three months. He will be working with Morgan Trassin on the ferroelectric behavior of hafnia and the growth of free-standing bismuth ferrite films with pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Welcome, Barri!
01.10.2022
Jan Gerrit Hostmann has joined our group as a Postdoctoral Researcher. Gerrit has done his PhD at the University of Göttingen and is interested in ultrafast imaging of correlation dynamics. Welcome to the group, Gerrit!
16.09.2022
Prof. Hans Kroha from the University of Bonn has joined our group as an academic guest for six months. We are looking forward to our time together and are looking forward to fruitful collaborations.
01.09.2022
In our recent publication in Science volume 377 titled external page'Magnetoelectric transfer of a domain pattern', we discuss how one can transfer ferroic domain patterns in multiferroic Dy0.7Tb0.3FeO3 from magnetization to polarization and vice versa by applying appropriate electric and magnetic fields. The process is reminiscent of quantum teleportation, where information cannot be transferred from a sender to a receiver without losing the information at the sender. Our work experimentally illustrates this process and discusses the phenomenon within Landau theory.
07.07.2022
Ipek Efe won the prize for the best overall poster at the annual International Symposium on Applications of Ferroelectrics 2022 (ISAF 2022) sponsored by the IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Society (UFFC-S) in Tours, France for her poster entitled: "In-situ monitoring of polarization dynamics during layered-ferroelectrics epitaxial design". external pageIEEE-ISAF
05.07.2022
Elzbieta Gradauskaite has successfully defended her thesis titled “Interfacial control of ferroic order in oxide heterostructures”. Congratulations Elsa!
19.05.2022
A new step for the Ferroic group with the appointment
of two new professors.
We are proud to announce that two Multifunctional Ferroic Materials group members were promoted to Professors. Dr. Morgan Trassin leading the research team focusing on oxide interfaces and epitaxial ferroelectric and multiferroic thin films in the group was appointed as adjunct professor in the Materials Department. This nomination recompenses his internationally recognized research expertise and involvement in the department’s teaching programmes.
On a great track after his recent Ambizione fellowship, Dr. Arkadiy Simonov will soon start his own research group as an assistant professor in the Department. His group will focus on the way to create, manipulate and utilize disorder in functional materials, and, thanks to generous SNF funding, will expand in the realm of quantum materials. We are looking forward to continuing our exciting collaboration with him!
16.05.2022
To celebrate the coming of summer, and our heroic SOLA performance, we had a small BBQ!
Thank you Marvin for organizing!
13.05.2022
Last minute bad luck can’t stop us! Congratulations to our team Overarching Scrutinizers for completing the SOLA race after 2 years of break with outstanding (😉) scores despite the last minute runner changes. Run Ferroics run!
02.05.2022
We welcome Jacqueline Thissen to the group! Jacqueline will take over the role of the administrative assistant.
11.03.2022
Pauline Dufour from the CNRS Thales research group has visited us for a short, three-week academic exchange. It has been a pleasure to work with you and to enjoy an amazing farewell celebration at Alumni Lounge. We wish you all the best for the rest of you PhD!
2021
14.12.2021
We welcome Susanne Blatter to the group! Susanne will take over as the administrative assistance of the group. Thank you Susanne!
09.12.2021
As is our tradition we, celebrate Christmas by having dinner together. We spend this evening in a magical atmosphere remembering and summarizing the last year and enjoying a swiss fondue.
09.12.2021
Arkadiy Simonov have received Eccellenza professorial fellowship from Swiss National Science Foundation. Eccellenza supports highly qualified researchers by allowing them to lead a generously funded research project as an assistant professor with their team at a Swiss higher education institution.
In this project Arkadiy will continue investigation of disordered materials but in addition to the chemical disorder he investigates now he will add a more challenging field of disorder driven by degenerate electron orbitals.
06.12.2021
Ahmed Samir Lotfy joined our group as a graduate student after finishing his Masters degree in Dresden. He will work on low-temperature scanning probe microscopy together with Youun Heo.
01.12.2021
Ipek Efe was selected to participate in the external pageGlobal Young Scientists Summit 2022 as one of the representatives of ETH Zürich. The Global Young Scientists Summit in Singapore brings together bright young researchers and top scientific minds from around the world to discuss science and technology trends, future game changers and how research could address major global challenges. At the Summit, participants will take part in lectures, plenary sessions and panel discussions and they will have the opportunity to interact with and be mentored by speakers including the Nobel Prize, Fields Medal, Millennium Technology Prize and Turing Award recipients in informal small group sessions.
06.10.2021
We are delighted to announce that our colleague Marcela Giraldo was selected as one of the 35 young women in science from the ETH domain to join external pageCONNECT, a career boosting program where she will be exposed to role models from academia, industry and the public sector in Switzerland. We warmly congratulate Marcela for this achievement.
13.09.2021
We welcome Rohit Kumar as a guest researcher from our collaborators at the University of Naples. Rohit will stay for 6 months in our group and perform optical experiments on highly correlated oxides.
06.09.2021
We are happy to welcome Dr. Feifan Wang as a Postdoc in our group! Feifan will join our optics team and investigate ultrafast dynamics in ferroics and other highly correlated systems by optical pump-probe methods.
01.09.2021
We have the pleasure to welcome Dr. Yooun Heo as postdoctoral researcher in our group. Yooun will lead our low-temperature scanning probe team. He will work on the microscopy of ferroic materials at low temperatures and high magnetic and electric fields.
01.06.2021
We welcome Aaron Müller as a new member of the Ferroic group! Aaron is joining our Numerical Simulations subgroup and will perform Monte-Carlo and phase-field simulations of ferroic and other highly correlated systems during his PhD.
29.05.2021
We are deeply saddended by the news, that our dear colleague, Dr. Robert Roth, has lost his battle against a serious illness. He passed away on Saturday, May 29, 2021. R.I.P. dear Robert.
01.04.2021
We are happy to welcome Ipek Efe as an "official" member of the Ferroic group! Ipek has been joining us already as a master student/assistant. She will continue her studies as a doctoral student in Dr. Morgan Trassin's ERC INSEETO team. We all wish you a good start.
01.03.2021
We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Kathrin Dörr, guest professor from the Martin-Luther-University, Institute for Physics, Halle, Germany. She will work with the Ferroic group from March 1, to May 31, 2021.
2020
01.09.2020
Floris Van Riel joins the group as an exchange student from Einthoven University, Holland. In his project he will investigate spin transport phenomena in ferroelectric/metal-based heterostructure devices. Floris will join us until December 18, 2020. We all wish you a good start!
01.09.2020
We are happy to welcome Joohee Bang as a new member of the Ferroic group! During her PhD she will investigate the Development of single crystal diffuse X-ray scattering methods for studying local order in epitaxially grown thin films.
01.08.2020
We are happy to welcome Dr. Robert Roth as a new Postdoctoral researcher in our group! Robert will investigate "low-temperature scanning probe microscopy on ferroic materials".
10.06.2020
Johanna Nordlander receives her Ph.D degree for investigating "Complex Polar States in Ultrathin Epitaxial Oxides". Congratulations Johanna!
08.06.2020
First Ferroic online Ph.D defense ever... Jannis Lehmann receives his Ph.D. degree for investigating "Toroidal Order in Magnetic Metamaterials". Congratulations Jannis!
01.05.2020
Dear Lea, what a special timing to start your doctorate (in homeoffice). But never the less, we all welcome you warmly - unfortuntely only virtual - in the Ferroic group and wish you a good start!
When the virus shuts down the ETH, work continues ... in a different manner.
02.03.2020
We are happy to welcome Jingwen Li as a new member of our team!
During her PhD, Jingwen will investigate the dynamics of exotic correlated systems using THz spectroscopy.
2019
Yet another successful year ended, giving us the opportunity to come together and enjoy a delicious fondue and other gourmet food during our Christmas dinner. In a cozy atmosphere we reflected the events of the year and raised our glasses to awards, grants, individual as well as collective progress achieved within the past year. Sadly, it was also time to say goodbye to Ehsan. Luckily he stays close with his new postdoc position in Prof. Rupp’s group, Physics Department, ETH.
12.12.2019
Dr. Christian Tzschaschel was awarded a SNF post-doc mobility grant to move to Prof. Su-Yang Xu's group at Harvard University. We will sorely miss you!
01.12.2019
We welcome Yevheniia Kholina in our group and wish her a good start! She will join Dr. Arkadiy Simonov as a Ph. D. Student in his project "Optimizing functional materials through tailored disorder".
21.08.2019
Christian Tzschaschel successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis on "Coherent spin dynamics in optically excited antiferromagnets". Congratulations Christian!
07.08.2019
Michael Wörner's goodbye party: Barbecue and pub night with a special pub quiz including live music. We are very grateful for having had you with us, Michael.
27.06.2019
Ehsan Hassanpour Yesaghi receives his Ph.D degree for investigations on "Magnetoelectric Domain Control in a Multiferroic Rare-Earth Ferrite". Congratulations Ehsan (with his little son Amir Ali)!
20.05.2019
We warmely welcome Dr. Michael Wörner, Max-Born-Institut, Berlin, to our group. He will stay with us as guest professor until August 15, 2019.
04.05.2019
The ferroics (*or Overarching Scrutinizers) complete the very first SOLA this year with outstanding scores!
12.04.2019
The Ferroic group member, Lukas Kürten, performed in the ScienceSlam on April 12th at the Swiss Interdisciplinary Students Congress in Zürich. In ten minutes (and with very few equations), he gave an overview of the many things advertised as “Quantum” on the internet and how many of those are scientifically valid (Spoiler: Almost none are!). If you missed it, you can find a performance on external pageYouTube.
21.03.2019
The FERROIC group welcomed the next generation of curious minds, as a group of high school students from Åva gymnasium (Sweden) visited our labs and learned about our research. We were delighted to host them and rumor has it, the school is already planning their return to ETH next year!
18.03.2019
Prof. Manfred Fiebig is back with us at the ETH Zurich after his six month stay at Rikken in Japan. Perfect moment to have some cake!
20.02.2019
Ferroics-afterwork pub night: Cozy atmosphere with draft beer and good music, darts, pool and poker ... all just one floor down.
23.01.2019
The World Economic Forum goes ferroic - the ferroics go World Economic Forum
The ETH Pavilion at the WEF, where the top political leaders, business leaders and economists discuss issues facing the world, gives a flavour of tomorrow's life. In this context, the materials department demonstrates how new materials will shape our future - including multiferroics to touch. Our ferroics team was represented by Thomas, Jannis, Ehsan and Lukas travelling through meters of snow to Davos.
07.01.2019
... when you realise that your research is attracting unexpected attention...
01.01.2019
We are delighted to welcome Martin Sarott in our group. Martin will investigate - in-situ - emerging polar states at complex interfaces.
2018
20.12.2018
The Christmas dinner is always a nice occasion to get together in a joyful atmosphere, enjoy a fabulous fondue and to review a very productive and successful year. Prof. Manfred Fiebig did not want to miss it either and flew in from Japan for our party specifically.
02.10.2018
Prof. Manfred Fiebig spends the next six months at the external pageRIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in the group of Yoshinori Tokura on a sabbatical leave. Seen the frist photos, he already adapted to the local customs. We are looking forward to have you back, Manfred!
01.09.2018
This month we have the pleasure to welcome two new PhD students in our group - Chia-Jung Yang and Yannik Zemp! Chia will investigate on strongly correlated electron systems via THz; Yannik will explore coupled ferroic orders on the domain level.
01.08.2018
We are happy to welcome Marvin Müller as a new member of our team!
During his PhD, Marvin will investigate the timescales of ferroic switching processes.
27.07.2018
Once in a red moon... 103 minutes of total lunar eclipse seen from a truly romantic location: the Belvedere on Pentecost Mountain in Potsdam.
27.06.2018
Air condition maintenance… laser system down… Fortunately there are concerts and football world cup in town – FERROICS night out.
01.06.2018
We have the pleasure to welcome Lukas Kuerten as a Postdoc in our group! Lukas will investigate complex systems by scanning probe microscopy under extreme conditions.
14.05.2018
We welcome Dr. Pritam Khan and Masataka Kanamaru from Takuya Satoh's group at Kyushu University. They will stay with us for two weeks to investigate ultrafast dynamics in bismuth ferrite.
Spring 2018
The ferroics group would like to share the happiness of two group members for getting married. Congratulations to both on finding the perfect person to share all days with.
16.04.2018
We are highly delighted that Prof. Roman Pisarev from Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute, Russia, visits the ferroics group for the next two weeks. It is a great pleasure to have you with us and to discuss new phenomena in field of ferroics.
05.03.2018
It is a great pleasure to us to welcome back Prof. Pierre Toledano for a visit in the ferroics group. We are looking forward to learn more about symmetry properties in crystals.
02.03.2018
Peggy Schönherr receives her Ph.D degree for investigations on "Topological Structures in Magnetic and Electric Materials". Congratulations Peggy (currently unpacking the present...)!
15.02.2018
We welcome Marc Reynaud, Ph. D. Student, University of Texas at Austin, Advanced Atomic Design Lab, Alex Demkov Group, to his work stay in our group! He will join us until the 31st May 2018.
07.02.2018
It is a great pleasure for us to welcome Laura Maurel Vélazquez, Paul Scherrer Institut, as an honorary member of the FERROICs team for her long-lasting loyalty and friendship to the group.
01.01.2018
We are happy to welcome Elzbieta Gradauskaite as a new member of our team! During her PhD, Elzbieta will investigate ferroic states at oxide interfaces.
2017
29.09.2017
Gabriele De Luca receives his Ph.D degree for investigations on "Controlling ferroic domain architecture in oxide heterostructures"! Congratulations Gabriele!
21.08.2017
We welcome Peter Meisenheimer, Ph. D. Student, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, to his work stay in our group! He will join us until 21st September 2017.
21.08.2017
Nature still does some of the best experiments... (Caspar, WY, USA, by Prof. Manfred Fiebig)
14.08.2017
Welcome back Andres! Prof. Andres Cano from the CNRS, Bordeaux, France, stays with us again as a guest professor from August 14, 2017, to August 15, 2018.
10.08.2017
Peggy Schönherr wins the ‘Best Student Presentation’ award at the external pageInternational Workshop on Topological Structures of Ferroic Materials 2017 for her talk about “Topological magnetic defects in helimagnetic FeGe”.
02.08.2017
We welcome Hiroki Ueda, Ph. D. Student, Division of Materials Physics, Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Japan, to his work stay in our group! He will join us until 31st October 2017.
11.07.2017
Mads Weber receives the external pageRolf-TarrachPrize 2017 of the 'Amis de l'Université de Luxembourg' for his thesis conducted at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology and the University of Luxembourg. ©Michel Brumat / University of Luxembourg, 2017
08.06.2017
Experiment meets Theory – joint group retreat of Nicola Spaldin’s and Manfred Fiebig’s groups at the Musikinsel Rheinau. The heads were spinning during discussions about common interests, reaching from strongly correlated systems via ultra-fast properties to world peace.
31.03.2017
Christoph Wetli successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis about his investigations on "Time-Resolved Collapse and Revival of the Kondo State near a Quantum Phase Transition". Congratulations Chris! ...and he even mastered the ride on the vacuum pump.
22.03.2017
Dennis Meier wins the renowned external pageGustav Hertz Prize of the German Physical Society (DPG) for his work on multiferroic domain walls.
10.03.2017
Jakob Schaab receives his Ph.D degree for his investigations on "Electronic Transport and Correlation Phenomena at Improper Ferroelectric Domain Walls". Congratulations Jakob!
03.03.2017
Sebastian Manz receives his Ph.D. degree for his investigations on "Magnetoelectric Domain Dynamics in TbMnO3". Congratulations Sebastian!
2016
09.05.2016
A cataclysmic event at ETH: The planet Mercury transits in front of the sun and darkens the day by 0.0004%.
29.03.2016
PD Dr. Dennis Meier has accepted an Associate Professor position at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway, starting June 2016. Congratulations Dennis, we will miss you!
23.03.2016
We are very happy to announce, that an ERC Advanced Grant for the Real-Time Observation of Emerging Properties in Ferroics was awarded to our group! It will allow to introduce nonlinear laser-optical processes as new in-situ technique.
04.03.2016
Martin Lilienblum receives his Ph.D. degree for his investigations on "Ferroelectric order in multiferroic hexagonal manganites". Congratulations Martin!
16.02.2016
We welcome Prof. Johann Kroha, guest professor from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. He will be staying with us until May 13, 2016, and we look forward to working together!
2015
14.09.2015
We welcome Prof. Andres Cano, Guest professor from the Institut de Chiemie de la Matière Condonsée de Bordeaux CNRS, Bordeaux, France. He will stay with us until the 31st December 2015 and we look forward working with him!
20.08.2015
We welcome Laura Maurel Vélazquez, Ph. D. Student, University of Zaragoza, Institute of Nanoscience of Aragón, Spain, to her second work stay in our group! She will join us until the 18th December 2015.
20.04.2015
We welcome Takuya Satoh from external pageKyushu University, Japan, as our guest professor for the next couple of months.
15.03. - 20.03.2015
DPG Spring Meeting in Berlin 2015
Quite a busy event: Organization of a Scientific Woodstock on domain walls in ferroics, presentation of many results in talks and posters, and there was still time to enjoy Berlin (What a nice place!). And we saw the solar eclipse!
2014
10.11.2014
Naëmi Leo receives her Ph.D. degree for her investigations on "Control of Electric Polarisation by Magnetic Fields in Spin-Spiral Multiferroics". Congratulations Naëmi!
"29.09.2014
Carsten Becher receives his Ph.D. degree for investigating "Induced Polar States in Oxide Thin Films". Congratulations Carsten!
01.05.2014
We congratulate Martin Lilienblum on winning the 2nd price at the image contest of the MRS meeting 2014!
2013
27.06.2013
We generated (optical rectification) and measured (electro-optic sampling) our first THz pulse. On the left handside you find the first ever measured THz pulse in the Department of Material Science at ETH!
20.06.2013
We welcome Markus Raschke, guest professor from the external pageUniversity of Colorado in the US. He will be staying with us for the next two months and work with us on interesting topics.
01.02.2013
Opening for a master thesis in collaboration with external pageIBM Research Centre in Rüschlikon.
2012
20.10.2012
A brand-new force microscope has been delivered and installed!
01.10.2012
A pulsed laser deposition system was granted by SNF and ETH. After 20 years of active research of optics and materials the group we will finally grow its first own sample!!
01.09.2012
We welcome Pierre Tolédano, guest professor from the external pageUniversity of Picardie in France. He will be staying with us for the next couple of months and strengthen the group's efforts in condensed-matter theory.
01.04.2012
Phew, the toughest part of the move is over. Full laser operation resumed in Zurich.
27.02.2012
The APS Fellowship of the Division of Condensed Matter Physics is awarded to Prof. Manfred Fiebig "For developments in non-linear optics and their application to solving seminal problems in multiferroics". Congratulations Manfred!
01.01.2012
Transfer of the laser labs from Bonn to Zurich.
2011
01.08.2011
Official opening of the Institute of Multifunctional Ferroic Materials with five members changing from the University of Bonn, Germany, where they had worked before, to ETH Zurich.