Svend-Age Biehs works on heat radiation at the nanoscale Physicist and private lecturer Dr Svend-Age Biehs today received the €5,000 prize for excellent research from the new Chair of the Oldenburg University Society, Honorary Professor Dr Werner Brinker, during a ceremony. The 39-year-old was honoured for his work in the field of radiative heat transfer at the nanoscale. At the award ceremony, Brinker said that Biehs was an example of the high level of research being carried out at the university. Biehs studied and completed his doctorate at the Institute of Physics at the University of Oldenburg. He received the Weser-Ems Science Prize from the OLB Foundation for his dissertation in 2008. A scholarship from the German Academy of Sciences and Humanities took him to the renowned Institute d'Optique in Paris in 2009, where he spent two years on a research stay to continue his work on radiative heat transfer, which had already fascinated him as a student. After his return to Oldenburg, he completed his habilitation. Thermal radiation is an everyday phenomenon that has been well understood for over a hundred years. However, if you look at thermal radiation between objects that are so close together that only a few atoms can fit between them, the laws change dramatically. In order to capture this, a near-field scanning thermal microscope was developed in Oldenburg, which is unique in the world and enables this phenomenon to be captured experimentally. In recent years, Biehs has worked closely with his Parisian colleague Dr Philippe Ben-Abdallah to research theoretical concepts for diodes, transistors and memories, which work with heat currents rather than electrical currents as in a computer chip. In principle, heat could be used to perform computing operations like in a computer, said Biehs about his research. However, the potential benefit lies more in using these elements to find new ways to dissipate heat at the nanoscale.
- Photos of the event
