Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research

The Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research was founded in 1969 and is one of the 82 Max Planck Institutes of the Max Planck Society. It is located on a campus in Stuttgart, together with the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.Research FocusResearch at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research is focused on the physics and chemistry of condensed matter, including especially complex materials and nanoscale science. In both of these fields, electronic and ionic transport phenomena are of particular interest.OrganizationThe institute currently has eight departments.Electronic Structure TheoryLed by Ali Alavi, the Department of Electronic Structure Theory is concerned with the development of ab initio methods for treating correlated electronic systems, using Quantum Monte Carlo, quantum chemical and many-body methodologies. Ab initio methods (including density functional theory) will be applied to problems of interest in heterogeneous catalysis, surface chemistry, electrochemistry, and photochemistry.Solid State SpectroscopyThe Department of Solid State Spectroscopy is headed by Bernhard Keimer. Collective quantum phenomena in highly correlated electronic materials are studied by spectroscopic and scattering techniques. Topics of particular current interest include the interplay between charge, orbital, and spin degrees of freedom in transition metal oxides, the mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity, and the control of electronic phase behavior in metal-oxide superlattices. The department also develops new spectroscopic methods such as high-resolution neutron spectroscopy and spectral ellipsometry.