Annual Report 2008 - Institut für Halbleiter - JKU

vi Annual Report 2008
symposium of the E-MRS spring meeting in Strasbourg, which was mainly dedicated to the
topic of this research network.
NanoScience and Technology
Friedrich Schäffler is the coordinator of the project cluster “Nanostructured Surfaces and Interfaces”
(NSI) of the Austrian Nano Initiative, incited by the Austrian Council for Research
and Technology. In 2008 the NSI consortium submitted a proposal for its last funding period
03/2009 - 02/2012. Several modifications in the project structure were introduced in order to
put more emphasis on applied research and nanoanalytics. New partners were recruited, and
new projects were introduced, while others were phased out, as planned. As an outcome of the
hearing and the decision of the Austrian Nanoinitiative, funding for NSI was granted in Dec.
2008 for the final three year period. Total funding for this period will amount to € 3.1M, at a
total project volume of € 3.6M.
The third funding period of NSI will bring together five (up from four) research institutions
and six (up from five) companies. The former comprises Johannes Kepler University, UAR,
the University and the Technical University of Graz and the Technical University in Vienna.
The companies are from Upper Austria, Lower Austria and Vienna.
Spezialforschungsbereich “IRON”
In July 2008 the prolongation project for the special research program (Spezialforschungsbereich
SFB 025) entitled “Infrared Optical Nanostructures” was submitted to the FWF. This
project is a collaboration with groups from the Technical University of Vienna, the Universities
of Vienna and Jena, and the Technical University of Munich. In December 2008 the project
evaluation by scientists from the US, from Great Britain, Switzerland. Italy and Germany
resulted in the strong recommendation to fund this SFB for another three years. Based on this
recommendation finally in May 2009 the FWF granted the funds for three further years (2009
– 2012). The principal investigators of five of the eleven granted projects are from this Institute
in Linz with a project volume of about € 1.6 M. This amount will support the work of 8
PhD students and 2 post-docs.
Two new FWF projects P20650-N20 (Heusler-Legierungsschichten auf Halbleiter-Substraten
and P20773-N20 (ESR-STM von organischen Nanoadsorbaten auf Silizium) were granted to
Reinhold Koch. Alberta Bonanni is part of a Project granted by the European Research Council
(ERC) on Functionalisation of diluted magnetic semiconductors.
Awards
Patrick Rauter was the recipient of one of the IUPAP young author best paper awards. He received
this prize during the ICPS-29 in Rio de Janeiro in July 2008. Elisabeth Lausecker and
Iris Bergmair were the recipients of the Austrian Nano Youth Award in 2008.
Structure and personnel
By the end of the year, the Institute had 49 co-workers in the Halbleiterphysik, 47 in Festkörperphysik,
and 14 in the CD lab, so altogether quite a large number of persons were working
in the semiconductor physics building of our University.