Engineered Quantum Materials

The US-German WE-Heraeus Workshop on “Engineered Quantum Materials” will take place at the Physikzentrum Bad Honnef from January 7-11, 2024. This workshop, funded by the WE-Heraeus and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundations, will bring together leading scientists in the quantum materials communities in Germany and the USA to discuss recent developments and future prospects in the synthesis and emergent properties of engineered quantum materials.  Engineered quantum materials are the foundation and are essential to the modern world in which we all live. The workshop will focus on transformative questions framed around cutting-edge challenges for quantum materials synthesis and fabrication and their characterization as well as their novel properties. New synthesis techniques for bulk materials, thin films and heterostructures as well as applications of advanced characterization probes will be included in the workshop.  The physical and electronic properties of topological and chiral materials as well as means of manipulating and controlling their topology and chirality, both in bulk and thin film forms will be discussed.  Indeed, new classes of quantum materials are found in insulators and semimetals that exhibit non-trivial topologies: they display a plethora of novel phenomena including: topological surface states; new Fermions such as Weyl, Dirac or Majorana; and non-collinear spin textures such as skyrmions.  Another entirely distinct approach to engineering quantum materials is via thin film growth techniques that allows for the formation of atomically engineered interfaces between distinct materials that can thereby give rise to remarkable properties not presented by the component materials themselves. The emergent properties of such manufactured quantum interfaces will be extensively discussed. Finally, one of the goals for the workshop is to establish an innovative and strongly collaborative network between premier research institutes in the USA and Germany involved in leading edge quantum materials research.

The conference language will be English. The Wilhelm and Else Heraeus-Foundation bears the cost of full-board accommodation for all participants.