Fyzikální ústav Akademie věd ČR

Mgr. Ing. Neda Neykova, Ph.D., received the 2015 Rector’s Award of the Czech Technical University (CTU) in Prague for outstanding doctoral thesis. Her doctoral thesis is titled ZnO nanocolumns for thin film silicon solar cells with high efficiency. Neda Neykova was a PhD student both at CTU under the supervision of prof. Ing. Zdeněk Bryknar, and at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences under the supervision of RNDr. Milan Vaněček, CSc.

The prize for the Best Young Researcher Contribution Content was awarded to postdoctoral researcher Ing. Tibor Ižák, Ph.D during the international conference on thin films, surfaces and interfaces (Solid State Surfaces and Interfaces, SSSI), which was held from 21 until 24 November in Piestany, Slovak Republic. SSSI 2016 consisted of 26 invited lectures (from total 31 lectures) and 27 posters.

Karel Tesař won Best Poster Award at the Materials Science and Engineering 2016 Congress (MSE), which took place in Darmstadt, Germany. MSE congress is organized by the German Materials Society (DGM) every two years. In 2016, two U.S. societies - Materials Research Society (MRS) and the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) - had been involved in the concept and design of the congress. MSE 2016 consisted of 590 lectures and 240 posters and the final number of participants surpassed 1300.

The team of scientists from the Institute of Physics was awarded the 1st place at the international conference Nanocon 2016 for the best poster on the topic Top-down and bottom-up fabrication of polycrystalline diamond-based photonic crystals. The competition consisted of more than 220 posters from the Czech Republic and abroad. The awarded poster was presented by Dr. Marián Varga from the Department of Optical Materials of the Institute of Physics of the CAS.

Prof. Jan Fousek, after a long disease, passed away on September 4 at the age of 86. Except for small interruptions, within 1958-1990 he headed the Department of Dielectrics of the Institute of Physics CAS. He was involved mainly in the research of domains and domain walls in ferroelectrics. He organised and chaired the 1st International Meeting on Ferroelectricity in Prague in 1966, establishing a series of meetings still active up to date.

The former head of the Department of Dielectrics, dr. Jan Petzelt, was awarded a prestigious award of the scientific community. During the recent international scientific symposium in Darmstadt (ECAPD-ISAF-PFM 2016, 21-15.8.2016), he became the first holder of the newly created Award of the ECAPD International Committee.

Jan Řidký, director of the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, describes the science potential of a high-power international laser facility nearing completion in the Czech Republic

On February 11th, 2016 announced the scientific collaboration of the laser interferometer LIGO, located in the USA, that they have successfully observed gravitational waves, which most likely originated from a merger of two black holes. The article in Physical Review Letters journals, describing this ground-breaking observation, is available for download at the link:

http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102

Researches from the Institute of Physics CAS (Laboratory of Functional Nanointerfaces and Laboratory of Carbon Nanostructures) developed a simple two-step approach how to control size and purity of HPHT nanodiamonds down to 1 nm from commercially available product by means of air annealing and centrifugation.

The newsletter will try to keep you informed periodically about the achievements in the implementation of ELI's research pillars, about the scientific and technological highlights of our research infrastructure, the ELI related scientific events, and about the extraordinary user research opportunities at ELI.

https://eli-laser.eu/media/1093/elines_newsletter_01_2015_dec_15.pdf