3rd NanoCharM European School on Ellipsometry Summary

A group photo of all the attendees at this year's winter school

A summary of the 3rd NanoCharM European Winter School on Ellipsometry has now been added to the library.

School Summary

The third winter school in the frame of the NanoCharM project was held between February 27th and March 5th 2010 in Bad Hofgastein, Austria. The town Bad Hofgastein provided all conference facilities and therefore the winter school took place in the Kongresszentrum (congress centre) Bad Hofgastein. A live presenation at the Winter School

The school had a special focus on metamaterials and especially negative index materials and structures supporting surface plasmons. To bridge this gap between advanced techniques for special materials and basic lectures, the organisers decided to invite several speakers who gave introductions in basics of ellipsometry and metamaterials.

In total 120 participants from 28 different countries attended the winter school and registered on Sunday, February 27th. The students came from four different continents.

Students were given the opportunity to participate in a poster session

The program included 30 scientific talks and due to the high number of talks “after dinner” sessions on Sunday and Monday with the talks of Mathias Schubert and Manuel Cardona were arranged.

Furthermore, a round table on Monday morning dealing with the topic of “Definition/meaning of ‘dielectric function’ when <1nm and limits of EMT” was organised. It was held immediately after the talks in the lecture room and Maria Losurdo, Josef Humlicek, Dave Aspnes, Kurt Hingerl, Carsten Rockstuhl, Eugene Irene and Mathias Schubert created some basic slides about the topic. Almost all students were participating in the round table. All talks and statements during the round table were recorded and will be published in the virtual lab.

Demonstrations of various techniques were also part of the line-up

The discussions of the round table did not end with the official lunch break as many discussions were ongoing. Therefore several lecturers agreed to organise discussion groups which were organised by lists at the registration desk. Many students took the opportunity to discuss with Dave Aspnes, Maria Losurdo, Kurt Hingerl, Eugene Irene who led the group discussions on Wednesday evening after the evening session.
The students had the opportunity to measure their own samples at the winter school and around 30 participants used this opportunity on Tuesday and Wednesday evening.
Also a poster session was organised in addition to this. Around 25 students showed their work on posters.

Next to the scientific part, several social events were organised also. At the registration the participants received a NanoCharM cap following the “tradition” from the previous NanoCharM schools. On Tuesday evening several members of the consortium organised a wine competition which was held after the poster and measurement session. It was a very unique come together and many students stayed at the conference centre although the late starting time (10pm). Further, on Thursday afternoon a ski race was organised in the nearby skiing resort and about 20 lecturers and students participated more or less successfully and, most importantly, without any accident.

Finally, on Thursday evening a conference dinner was held in the hotel. The committee arranged that all students and lecturers could stay together as long as they wanted (normally the dining area in the hotel closed at around 9pm). During the dinner the winners’ ceremony for the best wine and the fastest skiers (women, men) were awarded.

Attendees took part in a ski-race, with prizes awarded to the fastest skiiers

Josef Humlicek closed the school on Friday morning and announced the next NanoCharM workshop, which is held in Berlin in October. A feedback questionnaire was distributed and about 30 participants used the opportunity to hand it back in.

In addition to this, a list of presentations will be made available shortly in the Library.