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A subtle shift in growth chemistry, richer in tin or richer in selenium, can be the difference between a scattered island film and a smooth, continuous one. This highlight explores how new work combining MBE growth, atomic-scale simulations, and machine learning traces this sensitivity down to how tin and selenium behave differently on the growing surface, and closes the loop from growth conditions to atomic mechanism to observed structure and back again.

PDI is pleased to announce its second successful award under the NSF–DFG Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) program. The newly funded project, "AI-Driven Platform for 2D Materials Synthesis and Discovery," is co-led at PDI by Assoc. Prof. Nadire Nayir, Head of PDI's Computational Materials Science Group (COMMAT). The project marks an important milestone in PDI's strategic expansion into AI-enabled and data-driven materials research.

Weaver Emma Wood joins PDI as 2026 Artist-in-Residence. In this interview, she talks about twenty years inside the "strict planning" of her craft, why she's excited to be the elephant in the room at a physics institute, and what a conversation between a weaver and a physicist might sound like.

PDI is pleased to announce that João Marcelo Lopes has been invited to join the DFG Cluster of Excellence "Center for Chiral Electronics" (CCE) as an associate partner. This invitation is a direct reflection of Lopes's standing in the field, and opens a valuable new channel connecting PDI's epitaxy and materials expertise with the Cluster's work on chirality-driven device concepts.

Congratulations to Jingxuan Kang, who successfully defended his doctoral thesis, “(In,Ga)N Layer Growth on Planar Substrates and Top-Down Nanowires,” on July 9th, 2026. Jingxuan completed his PhD jointly at PDI and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, conducting his research under the supervision of Lutz Geelhaar at PDI.

Research data are key to advancing materials research in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Through a Memorandum of Understanding, five Berlin research institutions have agreed to establish a long-term collaboration in the areas of research data, data infrastructures, and AI.

Researchers from PDI, IKZ, Kenyon College, and the University of Toledo have resolved the long-debated electronic structure of chromium nitride, establishing it as a narrow-gap semiconductor with a bandgap of ~0.15 eV, opening new possibilities for mid-infrared photonics and spintronics.

PDI researchers, together with groups at Linköping University and the University of Potsdam, have identified why organic solar cells struggle to exceed 20% efficiency and found a practical route past it. The findings are published in Nature Photonics.

PDI is delighted to announce Emma Wood as the winner of the Artist-in-Residence Programme 2026. A Berlin-based weaver, Emma will spend three months embedded at the institute, exploring the connections between heritage weaving and materials science. Nine runners-up are also announced.

PDI has been granted EFRE funding to establish GISEH, a new application laboratory offering industry and academic partners rapid access to real-time X-ray diffraction characterisation of advanced materials — enabling iteration cycles that are otherwise inaccessible to many potential users.