Phd Researcher
Leibniz Institute For Crystal Growth
Berlin Area, Germany
The topic of my thesis was the impact on the growth conditions on the optical properties of SrTiO3. My PhD thesis work was done in the group Oxides and fluorides and completed with magna cum laude. The overarching goal of the project my thesis belonged to, was to grow SrTiO3 single crystals with a much higher quality than commercially available. These were mainly to be used as epitaxy substrates for a variety of thin film devices. My part of the project centered around characterizing the crystals grown, discovering what limited their quality and finding solutions with the growth experts. One issue was the tendency for the crystals not to grow as cylinders, but as large spirals. This indicated poor heat transport, which appeared at high emperatures. To investigate this, I performed UV/VIS and NIR spectroscopy from 4 to 1700 K. These spectra revealed that the very low heat transport at growth temperatures is caused by the semiconductor properties of the material. With this information, a solution growth method was found, which works at much lower temperatures and allowed us to grow crystals with a defect density up to 6 orders of magnitude lower than commercially available material. Other aspects of my work included: investigating the connection between the growth atmosphere and the colors of the crystal Investigations on other potential laser, optical and substrate materials The procurement of a new spectrometer for the high temperature set up and integ rating the control of this setup with LabViewFinding and building collaborations with experts from other institutes Co-supervising an MSc intern
