Before the current crisis, a mini-school for budding physicists was planned and organized by scientists at the Technical University of Munich and MGML, Charles University – a cooperation project funded by the Bayerisch-Tschechischen Hochschulagentur. But as it has turned out, Corona forced the event to be held in a virtual format. The silver lining is that this format allowed a larger number of people from around the world to participate.

Researchers at MIPT Laboratory of Terahertz Spectroscopy together with their MGML and international colleagues discovered a new phase of nanoconfined water; separate water molecules that are confined within nanocavities formed by ions of cordierite crystal lattice. The discovered phenomenon can also find practical applications in ferroelectrics, artificial quantum systems, and biocompatible nanoelectronics.

A Joint Declaration on Cooperation between Research Infrastructures MGML and NanoEnviCz was signed at the beginning of August 2020. Both sides confirmed their intention to work closely together in the liaison areas of science and research.

The basic condition for conduction relevant research is the availability of suitable samples. Despite the many crystal growth techniques available in MGML, several growth difficulties can always remain unsolved leading to very small or multiphase samples. We have implemented a microstructuring technique of multiphase or irregular samples to create devices for charge transport measurements. This allows us fabrication of samples with well-defined crystal orientation and dimensions so the resistivity can be determined with high precision despite sample size.

A new member recently joined the MGML team, Dr. Yunhu Huang. He will mostly work at Troja campus.

Reducing the dimensionality of condensed matter often leads to exceptional electronic, optical, and magnetic properties that enable new high-tech applications. Two-dimensional layered materials characterized by some interlayer bonds realized through very weak van der Waals (vdW) forces show an increasingly attractive appeal to scientists working in the fields of basic physics, material science and engineering. Slabs of atomic layers can be easily exfoliated by breaking the vdW bonds with little damage to both the extracted slab and the remaining structure. Novel physics and engineering of new ultrathin devices may be explored by exploiting the material properties of the slabs in isolation or by mixing and matching them to create new structures with atomically thin heterojunctions.