Topic: Tailoring Chemical Bonds to Design Phase Change Materials

Lecturer: Prof. Matthias Wuttig

Time: June 10, 2025, 14:00-16:00, UTC+8

Venue: Lecture Hall on the 10th Floor of Yifu Building, West Area of Mafangshan Campus

Biography: Professor Matthias Wuttig serves as the Director of the Physical IA Institute at RWTH Aachen University. He is also a member of the German National Academy of Sciences and Engineering, a board member of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, a fellow of the American Materials Research Society (MRS), the chair of the European Phase-Change Memory Committee, an honorary professor at Xi’an Jiaotong University, and an Einstein Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Professor Wuttig has made significant breakthroughs in phase-change memory mechanisms, new material design, and non-conventional chemical bonding. He published has 440 papers in prestigious journals such as Science, Nat. Mater., Nat. Photon., PNAS, PRL, and Adv. Mater., with 41,600 citations and an H - index of 99. He has been awarded numerous honors, including the ERC Advanced Grant from the European Research Council, the Heinz-Maier-Leibnitz Prize from the German Federal Ministry of Education, the Stanford R. Ovshinsky Prize (the highest honor in phase-change materials), and the Gaede Prize from the German Vacuum Society.

Abstract: In functional materials design, optimizing conflicting properties is a key challenge. Recently, novel functional materials based on chalcogenide semiconductors have gained attention for their excellent optoelectronic properties in phase change, thermoelectric, and photovoltaic fields. With the development of the “quantum theory of atoms in molecules”, chemical bonds have been quantitatively analyzed. Researchers have built a bonding mechanism map, linked chemical bonds to material properties, and combined machine learning to guide new material design. This progress has driven the development of new phase-change and thermoelectric materials and reignited scientific debates about the nature of chemical bonds.

Rewritten by: Li Huihui

Edited by: Li Tiantian

Source: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology For Materials Synthesis and Processing