Achim Wixforth

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Achim Wixforth (born May 26, 1956 in Bielefeld ) is a German physicist.

Life

In 1984 he received his diploma and in 1987 he did his doctorate at the University of Hamburg with the topic "Interaction of acoustic surface waves with a two-dimensional electron system". Between 1989 and 1990 he was Research Assistant Engineer at the University of California, Santa Barbara and from 1990 to 2000 at the Center of NanoScience in Munich.

After his habilitation at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich in 1994, he was a professor there.

In 1999 he invented a method for short-term storage of light in a gallium arsenide semiconductor crystal. The charge carrier pairs generated by the light in the semiconductor are separated by a spatially modulated electrostatic potential and thus prevented from recombining. Switching off the potential then allows recombination with emission of a flash of light. Storage times down to 1 microsecond have been demonstrated. The proposal was based on previous work using surface acoustic waves to achieve carrier separation.

In 2000, Wixforth founded Advalytix AG with former doctoral students Christoph Gauer and Jürgen Scriba and the then CFO of the biotech company Biofrontera Eckart Neuhaus, which emerged from the Center for NanoScience (CeNS) of the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.

Together with Advalytix AG and a team of biologists, chemists, physicists and engineers, he developed the so-called “ArrayBooster”, a technology that enables chemical reactions on biochips to be precisely controlled electronically and controlled by software. The core of this analysis device for rapid gene tests is called nanopumps, which can position reagents on the surface of chips without contact and without moving parts. The work serves as the basis for diagnostic test systems.

Since 2002 Wixforth has held the chair for Experimental Physics I at the University of Augsburg . He is also a member of the Nanosystems Initiative Munich (NIM).

Awards

  • 1998: Walter Schottky Prize for Solid State Research from the German Physical Society
  • 2002: Recognition award as part of the Bavarian Innovation Award
  • 2002: Innovation award from the Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken in Bavaria
  • 2003: 1st BioTrends Award for the best innovation in the field of nanobiotechnology.
  • 2006: Finalist for the Innovation Award of the Association for Lab Automation (ALA)
  • 2011: IFCS CB Sawyer Memorial Award (IEEE, European Frequency and Time Forum)

reception

The German author Frank Schätzing recorded the work of Wixforth in his novel Lautlos and attributed the corresponding research results to the hero Liam O'Connor there. With the help of his expertise, he succeeds in preventing an attack on the American president using a laser weapon.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ S. Zimmermann, A. Wixforth, JP Kotthaus, W. Wegscheider, and M. Bichler: A semiconductor based photonic memory cell . In: Science . tape 283 , 1999, p. 1292–1295 , doi : 10.1126 / science.283.5406.1292 (English).
  2. C. Rocke, S. Zimmermann, A. Wixforth, JP Kotthaus, G. Böhm, and G. Weimann: Acoustically Driven Storage of Light in a Quantum Well . In: Phys. Rev. Lett. tape 78 , May 19, 1997, p. 4099 , doi : 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.78.4099 (English).
  3. LMU INFORMATIONSDIENST 1/98. Retrieved March 10, 2020 .