Professor Evren Mutlugün has received the TÜBİTAK Incentive Award for 2022
Demir Research Group alumnus and Bilkent PHYS graduate Prof Dr. Evren Mutlugün (MS’07, PhD’11), has received TÜBİTAK Incentive Award for 2022, for his outstanding work in the field of Electrical-Electronics Engineering in the areas of nanotechnology, optoelectronic devices, and light harvesting.
December 2022
Dr. Zeynep Dikmen the Best Doctoral Thesis Award
Dr. Zeynep Dikmen, who is participating in our group as a visiting researcher, has received the Best Doctoral Thesis Award from Eskişehir Osmangazi University for her doctoral thesis entitled “Fluorophore crosslinked multi-responsive polymeric materials and colloidal quantum well-doped polymer composites in optical applications”.
March 2022
Dr. Onur Erdem IEEE Turkey Doctoral Thesis Award
Our group alumnus and Bilkent EE graduate Dr. Onur Erdem (BS ’13, MS ’15, PhD ’20), has received the 2021 IEEE Turkey Doctoral Thesis Award for his doctoral studies under the supervision of Professor Hilmi Volkan Demir.
IEEE Turkey bestows this award to young scientists who have completed their PhD in a Turkish university with a high-quality doctoral thesis in one of the fields of activity of IEEE within the last two years.
December 2021
Prof. Hilmi Volkan Demir Has Been Awarded The Turkish Physical Society International Special Honor Award (2021)
Prof. Hilmi Volkan Demir, director of UNAM – The National Nanotechnology Research Centre of Turkey and Bilkent’s Institute of Materials Science and Nanotechnology and a member of the Departments of Electrical and Electronics Engineering and Physics, was awarded the Turkish Physical Society International Special Honor Award.
September 2021
Prof. Hilmi Volkan Demir was named an IEEE Fellow
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has named Professor Hilmi Volkan Demir, of the Departments of Electrical and Electronics Engineering and of Physics, Chair of the Graduate Program of Materials Science and Nanotechnology (MSN) and Director of UNAM — The National Nanotechnology Research Center, an IEEE Fellow. The IEEE Fellow designation is one of the organization’s highest honors and is bestowed upon a very limited number of IEEE Senior Members who have contributed significantly to the advancement or application of engineering, science, and technology. Prof. Demir was named an IEEE Fellow on the basis of his contributions to semiconductor nanocrystal optoelectronics, colloidal nanophotonics, and lighting.
December 2020
Hilmi Volkan Demir Named a Fellow of The Optical Society
Prof. Hilmi Volkan Demir, director of UNAM – The National Nanotechnology Research Centre of Turkey and Bilkent’s Institute of Materials Science and Nanotechnology and a member of the Departments of Electrical and Electronics Engineering and Physics, was elected a Fellow of The Optical Society (OSA) by the society’s board on September 16, during the OSA’s annual meeting in Washington, DC.
The OSA’s mission is “to promote the generation, application and archiving of knowledge in optics and photonics and to disseminate this knowledge worldwide.” The society, founded in 1916, describes itself as “the world’s leading champion for optics and photonics, uniting and educating scientists, engineers, educators, technicians and business leaders worldwide to foster and promote technical and professional development.
”Prof. Demir’s election to Fellow status recognizes his distinct and significant contributions to the advancement of optics and photonics, in particular for pioneering and sustained contributions to the research and development of semiconductor nanocrystal optoelectronics and nanophotonics. Several factors are considered for election including specific scientific and technological contributions, a record of significant publications and patents, technical and industry leadership in the field as well as service to the society and the global optics community.
The number of OSA fellows elected each year is less than 0.5 per cent of the current membership total, making the process both highly selective and competitive. The 2020 class of Fellows will be honored at OSA conferences and meetings throughout 2020.
October 2019
Newton Fellowship Alumnus Follow-on Funding by the Royal Society
Our group alumnus Asst. Prof. Talha Erdem (EEE BS ’09, MS ’11 and PhD ’16) has been awarded the Newton Fellowship Alumnus Follow-on Funding by the Royal Society, which is one of the leading scientific councils of the world. The funding of Asst. Prof. Erdem’s project, who currently continues his research at Abdullah Gül University, will be conducted in collaboration with the Cavendish Laboratory, Department of Physics of the University of Cambridge. Together with Prof. Erika Eiser’s team at Cambridge, Asst. Prof. Erdem will study the potential use of sustainable, environmentally friendly materials as liquid crystals hybridized with semiconductor nanocrystals. This research will pave the way for the development of novel, environmentally friendly liquid crystal displays employing nanocrystal quantum dots.
August 2019
Our group members received the Best Poster Prize by the German Physics Society
Every two years, Bad Honnef Physics School holds one of the most important summer schools in the field of nanophotonics materials, Exciting Nanostructures. During the five days of school, prominent scientists around the world gather, share their findings and train next-generation researchers who want to start their research. One of the competitive and exciting parts of the school is awarding the best poster delivered by the participating students and is dedicated to the physics and chemistry of these nanostructures. The referees choose the best poster among more than 50 posters coming from the best research groups of the world, according to the content and novelty of the research, alongside the performance of the presenter. This year, our group members and UNAM’s Grad students Furkan Işık and Farzan Shabani received the best poster award at the Bad Honnef Physics School. This poster presents the semiconductor nanoplatelets (NPLs), which have emerged as a highly favorable class of nanocyrstals, especially attractive as nano-emitters. Owing to their tight 1D-confinement and quasi-2D atomically flat structure, the NPLs exhibit distinct strong excitonic features. Additionally, by forming their heterostructures (in core/crown and core/shell architectures), these excitonic properties can be further enhanced and tailored, and/or new properties can be imparted, for example, to obtain different types, combinations and degrees of electronic band alignments in a single quantum heterostructure. As a result, tunable outstanding optical properties can be attained, which make these hetero-NPLs highly promising for light-generating applications including lasers and LEDs. To synthesize different heterostructures of NPLs, various methods are implemented. Using the combination of colloidal atomic layer deposition (c-ALD) and hot-injection (HI) coating techniques, composition and structure of such atomically flat coating layers can be precisely controlled and tuned while successful passivation is obtained. The resulting NPL heterostructures, particularly enabled by the use of HI method alone or in combination with c-ALD, exhibit extremely high quantum yields (QY) (reaching near-unity in various cases), accompanied by high colloidal stability.
July 2019
