Scope of PSI Summer School
The experimental methods provided by PSI to the scientific community, which are synchrotron light, neutrons and muons, will play a crucial but not exclusive role, and the overall theme of this eighth school (2009) on Condensed Matter Research is dedicated to Functional Materials.
Functional materials are those which exhibit a predetermined chemical or physical response to external stimuli. The school focus is to achieve a basic understanding of how these materials respond when in nanoscale form and to learn more about their applications in areas like energy, environment and health.
We will show how photons, neutrons, and muons can be used to probe these materials and detect new phenomena on the nm scale. Various techniques based on the use of photons, neutrons and muons (powder diffraction, small-angle scattering, x-ray absorption spectroscopy, reflectometry, muon spin rotation/relaxation, real-space imaging and X-ray circular dichroism) will be introduced.
The school is addressed mainly to the education of PhD and postdoctoral students without prior knowledge of photon, neutron, and muon techniques. It is fully open to the national and non-national public, and the language of the school is English.