SPP Summer School 2021: "vdW assembly – more than playing Lego"

The first SPP summer school took place from Wednesday, June 30 to Friday, July 02 with the title "vdW assembly – more than playing Lego". It was held as a virtual event using Zoom with over 120 registered participants including lectures, poster sessions, virtual lab tours, an introduction into the Virtual Research Environment (VRE) as well as an assembly of the student board and a meeting of the PIs. Some impressions and the program can be found below. We want to thank all presenters and participants as well as the main organizers Prof. Ursula Wurstbauer and Florian Arnold for allowing interesting and active scientific discussions and exchange.

The lectures were given by PIs of the SPP with a focus on the preparation of vdW heterostructures and their characterization. Each lecture was accompanied by a panel discussion including the PhD students and senior researchers of the SPP. The lectures were:

• Prof. Rebeca Ribeiro-Palau (C2N, Université Paris-Saclay, France): "Building quantum materials layer by layer",
• Prof. Tobias Korn (Uni Rostock): "Building and characterizing van der Waals heterostructures", and
• Prof. Christoph Stampfer (RWTH Aachen): "Benchmarking graphene-based van-der-Waals heterostructures".

During the three poster sessions a total of 31 posters were presented, introduced by a short posterflash where all presenters could pitch their poster in one minute. Posters were presented in breakout rooms of the main Zoom session, making an individual discussion at the posters possible - a list of all posters can be found here. The poster prize of the SPP summer school 2021 - a participation at the Gordon Research Conference 2022 (“Two Dimensional Electronics Beyond Graphene”, June 12 – 17) fully paid for by the SPP 2244 - was awarded to Lukas Powalla for his poster on "Berry curvature induced local spin polarisation in gated graphene/WTe₂ heterostructures". All posters presented will be made available to the participants in the VRE.

The virtual lab tours were also given by members of the SPP to introduce their labs to the other participants via pre-recorded movies or a live stream. The available tours were:

• Tour 1: "Epitaxy, nanostructuring, and ultrafast optics for 2D science" (Dr. Nathan Wilson, WSI TU Munich),
• Tour 2: "Femtosecond Spectroscopy" (Dr. Steffen Michaelis de Vasconcellos and Prof. Rudolf Bratschitsch, University of Münster),
• Tour 3: "1. Physikalische Institut – AG Weitz" (Christian Eckel and Francesca Falorsi, Universität Göttingen),
• Tour 4: "Millikelvin Optical Spectroscopy" (Hendrik Lambers and Dr. Nihit Saigal, University of Münster),
• Tour 5: "Scanning Tunneling Microscopy" (Dr. Lüpke and Prof. Markus Ternes, Forschungszentrum Jülich), and
• Tour 6: "Two-color time-resolved Kerr microscopy" (Michael Kempf, University Rostock).

Additional items on the agenda were:

• Introduction of the VRE: The VRE was introduced as a platform meant for an active exchange between the members of the SPP and to facilitate collaborations. It gave an overview of what the VRE offers and what is possible with regard to e.g., the exchange of methods, procedures, or codes.
• PI meeting: On the last day of the summer school the PIs of the SPP met to discuss the latest developments and funding options like the student exchange program.
• Student board assembly: In parallel to the PI meeting the PhD students of the met to discuss details regarding administrative details of the SPP and the student exchange program. Furthermore, they elected Hossein Ostovar as the student representative. All information presented there will be shared with the participants via the VRE.

Impressions

Screenshot taken during the lecture of Prof. Rebeca Ribeiro-Palau

Screenshot taken of the participants during the closing session (only first page of main Zoom session)

Screenshot taken during the student board assembly

Program details

You can find the schedule below or as a pdf.