Walter-Schottky-Award for Felix Büttner
Dr. Felix Büttner is leading a Helmholtz Young Investigator group at HZB on topological solitons. © privat
The Walter Schottky Prize honours outstanding work by young physicists in solid-state research. For 2022, the award goes to HZB physicist Dr Felix Büttner for his groundbreaking achievements in the field of magnetic skyrmions.
"His work has contributed significantly to the understanding of the ultrafast generation and properties of these topological states."
This praise on Büttner's work is published on the website of the German Physical Society (DPG), which awards the Walter Schottky Prize.
The DPG further explains: Magnetic skyrmions are spin textures that behave like quasiparticles and have a non-trivial topology. Felix Büttner has made a decisive contribution to the fundamental understanding of the dynamics of skyrmions, taking their topology into account. He has used time-resolved X-ray holography and scattering experiments on X-ray lasers to elucidate the mechanisms of the generation of skyrmions by short laser pulses and to improve the possibilities for the fast and efficient movement of skyrmions by current pulses in ladder structures.
Felix Büttner studied in Göttingen and received his PhD in 2013 for his work at the interface of magnetism (Mathias Kläui, JGU Mainz) and X-ray physics (Stefan Eisebitt, TU Berlin). After a stint in industry at Daimler AG, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with G.S.D. Beach in 2015-2020. Since 2020, he has been leading an independent research group at the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie.
The award is expected to be presented in March 2022 during the DPG Spring Meeting in Regensburg.
- Alternating currents for alternative computing with magnetsA new study conducted at the University of Vienna, the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, and the Helmholtz Centers in Berlin and Dresden takes an important step in the challenge to miniaturize computing devices and to make them more energy-efficient. The work published in the renowned scientific journal Science Advances opens up new possibilities for creating reprogrammable magnonic circuits by exciting spin waves by alternating currents and redirecting these waves on demand. The experiments were carried out at the Maxymus beamline at BESSY II.
- BESSY II: Heterostructures for SpintronicsSpintronic devices work with spin textures caused by quantum-physical interactions. A Spanish-German collaboration has now studied graphene-cobalt-iridium heterostructures at BESSY II. The results show how two desired quantum-physical effects reinforce each other in these heterostructures. This could lead to new spintronic devices based on these materials.
- Postdocs at HZB: Crucial for research, innovation and diversityAt HZB, 117 postdocs from 29 countries are employed. They play a crucial role in driving the main research activities, fostering creativity and innovation. To honor them, the Postdoc Appreciation Week was first organised in the USA in 2009 and has in the meantime become a regular event in Germany as well in the third week of September every year.