【ZHOU HUIJIU FORUM】Invited Speaker: Prof. Matthias Wuttig
Prof. Wuttig, the professor in Department of Physics, RWTH Aachen (Germany), was invited to visit the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) of Xi’an Jiaotong University (XJTU) and gave a presentation entitled “Phase Change Materials by Design: The Mystery of Resonance Bonding ” on June 6th, 2017. The lectures has attracted a diverse crowd, including professors and students from all sorts of grade.
Phase-change materials (PCMs) are promising candidates for novel data-storage and memory applications. They encode digital information by exploiting the optical and electronic contrast between amorphous and crystalline states. What makes crystalline and amorphous PCMs so diff erent? This talk discussed the unique material properties, which characterized phase change materials. Particularly, it focused on a generic bonding mechanism in PCMs, namely, resonance bonding, that originates from the resonance between different bonding configurations. This can explain many of the characteristic features of PCMs.
Prof. Wuttig used humorous language and vivid examples to explain complicated mechanism, keeping the presentation alive. At the end of the lecture, audiences asked questions and participated in discussions actively.
Profile:
Prof. Wuttig is a full professor of physics at RWTH Aachen, where his research focus is the understanding and tailoring of materials with unique optical and eletrical properties. He received a diploma in physics from the Uneivisity of Cologne and a PhD degree from Forschungszentrum Julich/RWTH Aachen. He is the head of I.Institute of Physics (IA), speaker of the Strategy Board of RWTH Aachen, and computer science. He is the coordinator of the DFG funded Collaborative Research Centre “Nanoswitches” SFB917. His awards include an ERC Advanced Grant in 2013. He currently serves as the chairman of E\PCOS Committee, the most important annual conference in the field of phase change materials. He has authored or co-authored more than 300 peer-reviewed journal articles, review papers, or book chapters, including 11 of them published on Nature Materials and Science. The total SCI citation of these articles is over 13000 and his h-index is 56.
