12.06.2018 1st Sino-German Symposium on Functional Nano-Materials Sciences held in Hangzhou

The beautiful and historic city of Hangzhou with its popular West Lake and unique sceneries was recently the site of a scientific Sino-German Symposium on Functional Nano-Materials Sciences. Participants from China and Germany, as well as a number of international guests had the chance to get an insight to key competencies of many invited experts. Both early-career and experienced researchers took the chance to meet colleagues and to build their networks during this Symposium ‘FNMS2018’ in China. 76 participants contributed 42 invited presentations and 22 poster presentations to the Symposium.

The Co-Chairs, Prof. Dr. Huizhen Wu and Dr. Arash Rahimi-Iman, from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou and Philipps-Universität Marburg in Germany, respectively, explain: “Our Symposium shall promote the intensified and sustainable Sino-German connection of experts in the domain of materials sciences, material physics, and technologies employing novel materials, such as optoelectronics, as well as nanophotonics.” For this Symposium in May 2018, financial support was provided by the Sino-German Center for Research Promotion.

According to the Symposium hosts, the investigation of novel and functional materials is of great importance for the optimization and development of electrical and optical devices. Such devices promise not only higher efficiencies, but enable the development of utterly new concepts, which are in high demand by modern information processing, quantum optics, medical technologies and sensing applications. Nanomaterials open up new avenues for biophysics, lab-on-the-chip techniques and the field of nanophotonics, to name but a few. The organizers believe that both, China as well as Germany, among other nations, will intensively explore such systems and materials.

In this context, the topical focus of this Sino-German Symposium was chosen to be on functional nanomaterials, with the content of its 16 scientific sessions covering a wide range of aspects such as physics of novel materials, as well as materials engineering, characterization and applications. These topics were also well reflected by the student contributions, from which three were awarded best student poster prizes during the Symposium’s banquet.

The two initiators and organizers proudly look back on the 1st Sino-German Symposium in this significant research domain and already look forward to its continuation, with the next event of this kind planned to be held in Germany.