V001 / JSI

Dr Matjaž Humar, Head of the Laboratory for Biological and Soft Photonics and Quantum Optics at the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the Jožef Stefan Institute, and Dr Andrii Tykhonov have obtained European Research Council (ERC) grants to consolidate their independent research careers. For both of them, this is their second ERC research project and an absolute confirmation of what top scientists they are. The goal of Dr. Humar’s project, SoftQuanta – Soft and biological quantum light sources, is to develop unprecedented quantum light sources in soft and biological matter based on liquid crystals. In other words, the project envisions the creation of a quantum LCD, with the potential to radically transform the field of quantum optics. Dr Andrii Tykhonov's research project PeVGALAXY - Direct PeV Detection of Galactic Cosmic Rays in Space aims to accurately detect for the first time cosmic rays in space at the highest energy levels, which will allow scientists to pinpoint the origin of the most powerful stellar explosions in our galaxy. Congratulations!

From November 18 to 21, 2024, Mojca Otoničar, Danjela Kuščer, Barbara Malič, and Tina Ručigaj Korošec from the Department of Electronic Ceramics, with the help of all colleagues from the department, organized an international school on ferroelectrics called 'Ferroschool', which took place at JSI. The four-day event was sponsored by the international IEEE UFFC-S (Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control Society), and was aimed at educating younger colleagues from the field of ferroelectrics. The participants, who also presented their work in posters, came from numerous European countries, as well as from Japan, South Korea, India, and the United States. The school hosted fourteen foreign and Slovenian lecturers that covered a wide range of topics, from the physics of ferroelectrics, simulations of defected structures and machine learning, material synthesis, to analytical methods of detecting and evaluating the properties, and applications of ferroelectrics in electronic devices.

In October 2024, the Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit and Exhibition (SIPS 2024) was held in Crete, Greece, featuring plenary lectures by Nobel Laureates and multidisciplinary scientific symposia. Researchers from the Department of Nanostructured Materials presented invited lectures at the SISAM (Science of Intelligent & Sustainable Advanced Ferromagnetic and Superconducting Magnets) Symposium, dedicated to Prof. Dr. Ludwig Schultz, Professor Emeritus at the Metallic Materials and Metal Physics Institute, TU Dresden. At the event, Dr. Tomaž Tomše, a member of the Department, received the prestigious "Wutrich International Young Star Award" for outstanding scientific performance in the early stages of his career, awarded yearly by the FLOGEN Sustainability Network. Dr. Tomše's work focuses on developing innovative manufacturing strategies for Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets, using rapid powder consolidation with reduced critical raw materials.

Researchers from the Extreme Conditions Chemistry Laboratory (ECCL) at the Jožef Stefan Institute (Matic Belak Vivod, Matic Lozinšek, and Mirela Dragomir) along with their collaborators (Zvonko Jagličić, Graham King, Thomas C. Hansen), have introduced mechanochemistry as a novel method for synthesizing reactive silver(II) compounds. This innovative approach allowed them to prepare the first examples of binary mixed-valent silver(I,II) fluorides, Ag₃F₄ and Ag₂F₃. The crystal structures of these new compounds were determined using powder X-ray diffraction measurements at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron. Magnetic measurements, along with neutron powder diffraction (NPD) data from the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), revealed that these binary silver(I,II) fluorides exhibit low dimensional (1D) antiferromagnetic behavior. These compelling results suggest that mechanochemical synthesis can expand the silver(II) chemistry, potentially enabling the preparation of other mixed-valent phases and compounds of transition metals in rare oxidation states. This study, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, is dedicated to the memory of Professor Dr. Boris Žemva.