The winners of the SPS Awards 2016
The SPS Award committee under the lead of Professor Louis Schlapbach selected the winners for 2016 out of numerous submissions. Unfortunately there was no suitable candidate for the newly introduced SPS Award in Computational Physics, sponsored by COMSOL. We nevertheless hope to receive numerous candidatures for the next round in 2017.
The 2016 winners presented their work at the annual meeting in Lugano. Below you can read the laudationes written by Louis Schlapbach and the summaries written by the authors.
SPS Award in General Physics, sponsored by ABB
The SPS 2016 Prize in General Physics is awarded to Susanne Baumann for her development of the coherent manipulation of individual atomic spins on surfaces. Her work, which was published in Science in 2015, showed that the quantum states of individual atoms on surfaces are accessible to coherent quantum control. This initial work will surely lead to the application of atoms on surfaces as qubits for quantum computation as well as for exquisitely sensitive detectors of magnetic and electric fields. In addition, Susanne Baumann is recognized for the exploration of the magnetic properties of Co and Fe atoms with a combination of scanning tunneling microscopy and x-ray absorption performed at the Swiss Light Source (Science 2014).
SPS Award in Condensed Matter Physics, sponsored by IBM
The SPS 2016 Prize in Condensed Matter Physics is awarded to Marta Gibert for her excellent PostDoc-research work on magnetic coupling at oxide interfaces, especially in the interface engineering of heterostructures combining nickelates and manganites. The observation of exchange bias in superlattices of non-magnetic LaNiO3 and magnetic LaMnO3 layers not only implied the development of interface-induced magnetism in the paramagnetic LaNiO3 layers, but also provided a very subtle tool for probing interfacial coupling.The experimental results were supported by firstprinciples calculations.
The results led to the publications:
"Exchange bias in LaNiO3–LaMnO3 superlattices", M. Gibert, et al., Nature Materials 11, 195 (2012).
"Interfacial Control of Magnetic Properties at LaMnO3/LaNiO3 Interfaces", M. Gibert et al. , Nanoletters 15, 7355 (2015).
"Interlayer coupling through a dimensionality induced magnetic state in LaNiO3", M. Gibert et al. Nature Communication 7, 11227 (2016).
SPS Award in Applied Physics, sponsored by OC Oerlikon
The SPS 2016 Prize in Applied Physics is awarded to Bruno Schuler for his work of unprecedented resolution on the quantitative determination of the adsorption geometry of individual molecules, their identification and manipulation using atomic force microscopy (AFM) with tip functionalizations made by atomic manipulation, published under the titles “Adsorption Geometry Determination of Single Molecules by Atomic Force Microscopy” (Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 106103 (2013)) and “Reversible Bergman cyclization by atomic manipulation” (Nature Chem., doi:10.1038/nchem.2438 (2016)).
Using this approach, he was able to induce intramolecular reactions and demonstrated the re-arrangement of bonds within a molecule, namely a reversible switching between a structure with two six-membered carbon rings and one with a ten-membered carbon ring. This reaction, called Bergman cyclization, features switching between singlet and triplet ground states, thus switching of the spin multiplicity.
The methods that he brought forward are already now used as standards in the non-contact AFM community indicating a path towards chemical resolution using atomic force and Kelvin probe microscopy.
SPS Award related to Metrology, sponsored by METAS
The SPS 2016 Prize related to Metrology is awarded to Fabian Menges for his excellent PhD work entitled "Scanning probe thermometry of nanosystems“. He developed scanning thermal microscopy into a quantitative method suitable to measure both temperature and thermal conductance with so far unattainable combination of spatial (sub-10 nm) and heat flux resolution (sub-nW). Using his newly developed method and a custom built vacuum scanning thermal microscope, he could spatially resolve local heat dissipation processes such as the formation of hot spots and Peltier effects in operating nanoscale devices. His accomplishments are scientifically of high relevance to the entire field of nanoscale thermometry, e.g. to characterize local thermal non-equilibrium processes in low power electronics or thermoelectrics.