Award for Talk at EPCOS 2025

Our group member Nils Holle received the second prize for best talk at the EPCOS 2025 conference in Marseille. In his presentation titled “Effect of Peierls-like distortions on transport in amorphous phase change devices,” he presented new insights into electronic transport in phase change materials – materials that could play a key role in neuromorphic computing.

Using advanced computer simulations, the study shows how tiny atomic distortions in amorphous materials affect the flow of electrical current and contribute to resistance drift, a key challenge for future memory and computing devices.

Congratulations on this recognition!

Link to publication: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43246-025-00776-5

New software for atomic structure analysis published

Our software called "fastatomstruct" has been published in the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS). The software helps scientists study the structure and movement of atoms in materials.

What the software can do:

1. Fast analysis: Modern programming enables significantly faster calculations than existing tools
2. Versatile applications: From simple structural measurements to complex material properties
3. Large datasets: Can easily handle very large atomic systems
4. User-friendly: Integrates easily into existing research workflows

The software is particularly useful for studying liquids, glasses, and amorphous materials. It supports scientists in answering important questions about material development - such as how materials behave at different temperatures or which structures are responsible for certain properties.

As open-source software, "fastatomstruct" is freely available to all researchers and can contribute to the development of new materials and technologies.

Link to our publication: https://joss.theoj.org/papers/10.21105/joss.08106

New insights into the transformation dynamics of antimony

At the Institute of Materials Physics at the University of Münster, researchers investigate materials that can transform their internal structure very rapidly, thereby significantly changing their optical properties. This behaviour is useful, for example, when processing information using photonic waveguides. Together with other researchers in Prof Martin Salinga’s team and cooperation partners from the University of Groningen, doctoral student Sebastian Walfort has shown for the first time which phases the chemical element antimony undergoes during its transformation.

The full article can be found here.

Nils Holle: Doctorate with top marks

After his dissertation entitled ‘Electronic transport in amorphous phase change materials’ was unanimously rated ‘summa cum laude’ by three experts in our field of research, Nils Holle was able to confirm this excellent rating once again in his disputation on 13 January.

We congratulate him on this success. We are also delighted that Nils will remain with our team beyond his doctorate.

One of two Collaborative Research Centres (CRC) at the University of Münster will be receiving funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for another four years. Several million euros will go to CRC 1459 “Intelligent matter: From responsive to adaptive nanosystems”.

International team of researchers develops photonic processor with adaptive neural connectivity

Click here for the article.

Sebastian Walfort was awarded the EDISON Young Researcher Award at this year's EDISON conference. Here, participants from all over the world discussed latest progress in the field of fundamental physics and applications of electron dynamics in semiconductors, optoelectronic devices, and nanostructures. The international jury awarded the prize to Sebastian Walfort for his presentation entitled "Correlations in Resistance Fluctuations of Germanium Telluride Glass". We congratulate him and are excited to see how this research topic will develop further.