Associate Professor, Institute of High Pressure Physics (UNIPRESS), Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland

Biography: Małgorzata Wierzbowska achieved her Ph.D. from Nicolas Copernicus University in Toruń (Poland) in 2000. After that, she went on to work as Postdoctoral Fellow in Lund (Sweden), Würzburg (Germany), Dublin (Ireland) and Triest (Italy). She is now an Associate Professor at Unipress in Warsaw. Her current research is focused on theoretical modeling of novel materials for electronic applications: 2D organic layers, hybrid organic-inorganic solar cells, and polarization doped GaN.

Speech Title: Hydrogen bonds and dipole groups used for photovoltaics, topological insulators and memory devices
Aims: Design of molecular systems for an application in the electronic devices, such as the solar cells [1,2], fast memory [3], logical switches [4], magnetic topological insulators [5,6].

Methods: Modeling materials from first principles using the density-functional theory (DFT) framework and beyond that, the GW approach, and a combination of the DFT with the tight-binding approach and Wannier functions.

Results: New molecular systems are found. They possess unique properties, such as cascade donor-acceptor energy levels, separate-path electron and hole transport for low carrier-recombination rates and high mobilities, negative differential resistance, fast proton switching correlated with a change of the magnetic pattern, and tunable topological edge states.

Conclusions: Theoretical modeling predicts that the dipole groups and hydrogen interactions can be successfully utilized in a prediction of molecular systems with the desired functionalities. Further combined experimental and computational investigations are necessary in order to build the prototype systems.