WITec appoints the winners of the PaperAward 2013: Research groups from France, Germany, and Spain are among the winners. For WITec PaperAward 2013, 54 publications, published between January and December 2012, were submitted to this year’s competition. Due to the number of high-quality papers, the PaperAward jury decided to recognize three winning papers in gold, silver, and bronze.

The PaperAward 2013 in gold goes to Dr. Léo Greusard from Institut Langevin ESPCI ParisTech and Dr. Raffaele Colombelli from the University Paris Sud. They successfully collaborated with researchers from Institut des Nanotechnologies de Lyon and the Joint lab of ‘Alcatel-Lucent Bell Laboratories France’ and published in NANO letters “Constantini et al., In Situ Generation of the Surface Plasmon Polaritons Using a Near-Infrared Laser Diode”. This scientific work convinced the jury by describing a novel application for scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM), which opens new opportunities in semiconductor research.

The silver WITec PaperAward winners are researchers from the Institute of Photonic Technology in Jena, Germany. Dr. Christian Matthäus and Prof. Dr. Jürgen Popp demonstrated, together with colleagues from Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and the Catholic Clinics in Koblenz, in the paper “Matthäus et al., Noninvasive Imaging of intracellular Lipid Metabolism in Macrophages by Raman Microscopy in Combination with Stable Isotopic Labeling,” published in Analytical Chemistry, how Raman spectroscopy can be successfully used to image cellular processes. The jury honored Dr. Matthäus and colleagues for their scientific work in this very auspicious new field for Raman spectroscopy.

Dr. Léo Greusard (left) from Institut Langevin, ESPCI ParisTech, France, receives the WITec PaperAward Certificate in gold and a 500 Euro Amazon gift card from the WITec sales representative Nicolas Tcherbak (right). Photo courtesy of WITec

The WITec PaperAward in bronze goes to the research group of Prof. Dr. José F. Fernández from the Electroceramic Department, Instituto de Cerámica y Vidrio in Madrid, Spain. Prof. Fernández and colleagues published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry in collaboration with researchers at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, the paper “Rubio-Marcos et al., High spatial resolution structure of (K,Na)Nbo₃ lead-free ferroelectric domains.” The jury chose their scientific work for the award because it shows the combination of Raman spectroscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) as a powerful tool to investigate ferroelectric domains.

Every year scientists from all over the world are invited to submit their publications to the WITec PaperAward competition. Once a year, a jury of WITec scientists chooses the WITec PaperAward winner. Criteria to be selected by the jury are for example the impact of scientific results and the innovation of the applied techniques.

WITec PaperAward 2013 winning publications:

Costantini, D., Greusard, L., Bousseksou, A., Rungsawang, R., Zhang, T. P., Callard, S., Decobert, J., et al. (2012). In situ generation of surface plasmon polaritons using a near-infrared laser diode. Nano Letters, 12(9), 4693–7. doi:10.1021/nl302040e

Matthaeus, C., Krafft, C., Dietzek, B., Brehm, B. R., Lorkowski, S., & Popp, J. (2012). Noninvasive imaging of intracellular lipid metabolism in macrophages by Raman microscopy in combination with stable isotopic labeling. Analytical Chemistry, 84(20), 8549–56. doi:10.1021/ac3012347

Rubio-Marcos, F., Del Campo, A., López-Juárez, R., Romero, J. J., & Fernández, J. F. (2012). High spatial resolution structure of (K,Na)NbO3 lead-free ferroelectric domains. Journal of Materials Chemistry, 22(1), 9714–9720. doi:10.1039/c2jm30483j