Our former colleague Marcus Ossiander has been awarded the START Prize 2022 of the Austrian Science Fund FWF. He is now moving from his previous position at Harvard to the Graz University of Technology. Marcus Ossiander plans to use the €1.2 million science prize to develop new nano-optics. His goal is to build a microscope that measures ultra-short chemical reactions with extreme precision.
To do this, Marcus Ossiander wants to use nanostructures such as those used for virtual reality. These optics resemble a photo lens in their function, but are flat. The new technology is designed to focus particularly high-energy ultraviolet light. Other optics - conventional lenses, for example - cannot do this because extreme ultraviolet light is absorbed by almost all materials due to its short wavelength. The short wavelength, in turn, then makes it possible to observe the smallest electronic movements with time resolutions in the range of attoseconds.
Picture: Sabine Hoffmann/FWF
More information:
Interview with Marcus Ossiander in scilog – the magazine of the Austrian Wissenschaftsfonds FWF:
https://scilog.fwf.ac.at/natur-technik