Prof. Darrell G. Schlom appointed as Leibniz chair at Leibniz-Institut für Kristallzüchtung (IKZ)

The IKZ has been working on the topic of perovskite crystals since the institute was founded in 1992. Within the framework of a joint research project almost 20 years ago, Darrell Schlom came up with the idea of doing research on rare earth scandate substrate crystals (REScO₃) with perovskite structure together with the IKZ. For the first time, these novel substrate crystals should make it possible to establish "strain engineering" in the "oxide world" in order to research novel material properties in thin film heterostructures. This goal was achieved after only a few years of intensive cooperation and was presented to the scientific community in 2004 in the context of a joint Nature publication, which now has a very high number of citations.

From this work, an important R&D activity has developed at the IKZ, which makes the work of a worldwide research 'community' possible at all by means of non-commercially available crystals. The joint research between Darrell Schlom and the IKZ was not limited to scandate in the following years. Many more perovskites, pyrochlore and other oxides were added over the years and led to 35 joint publications in peer-reviewed journals, including numerous articles in Science or Nature.

A worldwide academic research landscape (see e.g. the international conference series 'Workshop on Oxide Electronics (WOE)`) has emerged and the IKZ has become the central R&D platform for the increasing crystal requirements of this exciting community, in line with its Leibniz mission to enable excellent research by providing non-commercially available special crystals.

Prof. Schlom works at Cornell University in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering with a focus on heteroepitaxy of oxide layers using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Especially the approach "materials-by-design" characterizes his work and regularly leads to the discovery of materials with outstanding properties. He is currently director of the NSF platform PARADIM (Platform for the Accelerated Realization, Analysis, and Discovery of Interface Materials) and Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Industrial Chemistry. In addition to the Frank Award and the Humboldt Research Award, he received the MRS Medal in 2008, the SRC Award in 2004 and the Penn State Wilson Award in 2001. He received seven other awards between 1989 and 1999, including an invention award from IBM.