Latest News

An international research team led by the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, PDI, and the University of Iowa has demonstrated a new way to control how light behaves at extremely small scales by changing the atomic composition of a material. The results pave the way for more versatile infrared optical components, such as compact waveguides, sensors, and on-chip photonic devices, and highlight isotopic engineering as a powerful new tool for controlling light at the nanoscale.

Congratulations to Jakob Schadow, who successfully completed his Bachelor’s degree in Microsystems Technology at HTW Berlin – University of Applied Sciences on 12 December 2025. From April to October 2025, Jakob carried out his Bachelor’s thesis research at PDI, working under the supervision of Nicole Volkmer in the Technology and Transfer Department.

New research based on the PhD thesis of Francisca Marin Largo, carried out within PDI’s Core Research Area III-V Nanowires for Optoelectronics, has been published in Advanced Optical Materials. The study presents a new optical approach to probing light absorption in semiconductor nanowires — a long-standing experimental challenge in nanoscale optoelectronics.

Scientists at PDI, in collaboration with Penn State University, have demonstrated unprecedented control over atomic-scale defects in a two-dimensional silver layer, opening new possibilities for exploiting defects in two-dimensional metals as functional elements in future nanoelectronic and quantum devices.

A research paper with contributions from PDI scientists has received significant international attention, having been featured on the cover of the Journal of Applied Physics and now highlighted by the industry publication Semiconductor Today.

UnicornOne marks a major step toward autonomous, AI-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. In its first six months, the PDI–Bizmuth MBE collaboration has progressed from concept to live lab operation, demonstrating how open, extensible control architectures can accelerate innovation in materials research.

The open-source data analysis software HyperSpy has received the Open Science Award 2025 (Coup de cœur du jury) from the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation. The award recognizes long-standing, community-driven software that enables reproducible research across disciplines. PDI’s ZALKAL team, led by Senior Scientist Jonas Lähnemann, plays a key role in the development of HyperSpy, which underpins cathodoluminescence and spectroscopy data analysis at PDI and beyond.

A research team from PDI and Leibniz Universität Hannover has developed a new class of programmable semiconducting material by integrating light-responsive molecular switches directly into the bulk of a crystalline semiconductor. The study, published in Advanced Functional Materials, opens pathways toward all-optical computing, adaptive electronics, and energy-efficient information processing.

PDI is pleased to announce its participation in a newly funded project titled “Atoms-to-Device Closed-Loop Predictive Design of Electro-Optic Materials for Quantum Photonic Circuits”. The project is supported within the Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) through a joint NSF–DFG partnership that promotes collaborative materials research between institutions in Germany and the United States.

We are pleased to announce that PDI scientist Philipp John, together with collaborators from CNRS-CRHEA (Centre de Recherche sur l’Hétéro-Épitaxie et ses Applications), have been successfully awarded funding through the ANR–DFG program for their new collaborative project MINT. The collaboration underscores PDI’s ongoing commitment to innovation through strategic partnership and to addressing key scientific challenges that shape the future of advanced electronic and photonic technologies.