July 20, 2018 @ 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm

Hunt Library room 4106

Come grab a bowl of Howling Cow Ice Cream and join us for a talk in the AIF Seminar Series. Dr. Semen Gorfman, senior lecturer at the Materials Science and Engineering department at Tel Aviv University, will present time resolved x-ray diffraction for materials science (abstract below). The AIF Seminar Series is designed to be informal, interactive, and fun. There will be plenty of opportunities to discuss science and network.

Please RSVP here by July 16, 2018.

Time-resolved X-ray diffraction for materials science

Abstract

X-ray crystallography is the versatile and rapidly developing area of natural science. While holding its intrinsic cross-disciplinary appeal, it supplies invaluable characterization tools for solid-state physicists, materials scientists, chemists and biologist. While many methods of X-ray crystallography (as e.g. standard structure solution) are becoming routine, the new generation synchrotron radiation sources and X-ray free electron lasers call for the rapid development time-resolved X-ray crystallography. This is relatively new branch of crystallography, which is by far less established and which aims for the set of tools to access time-dependent changes of materials (micro-) structure under external perturbation.

This talk will highlight some synchrotron-based techniques of time-resolved X-ray diffraction and demonstrate how it helps to understand important functions of materials, whose response to external perturbation underpins practically important physical properties. We will especially focus at the structural mechanisms of enhancement of piezoelectricity, dielectricity and ferroelectricity – the properties, which describe response of crystalline materials to the variation of external electric field on the microsecond and millisecond time scales.

Short Biography

Dr Semën Gorfman is the senior lecturer at the Materials Science and Engineering department at Tel Aviv University. He received his MSc in Physics from Chelyabinsk State University (Russia) and obtained PhD in Solid State Physics from the University of Siegen (Germany). In 2008-2011 he worked as a postdoc in the University of Warwick (United Kingdom), in  2011-2016 / 2016-2017 was a lecturer in the Universities of Siegen / Freiburg (Germany). His research interest and expertise span fundamental and X-ray crystallography, physical properties of crystals, piezoelectrics and ferroelectrics, high-resolution X-ray diffraction and precise structure analysis, in-situ X-ray diffraction studies of crystalline materials under external perturbation, application of synchrotron radiation. The research of Dr Gorfman are frequently performed at central synchrotron radiation facilities as ESRF, PETRA III and Diamond Light Source.