Paul Heitjans

Paul Heitjans (born June 27, 1946 in Emsdetten ) is a German physicist who taught and researched at the Leibniz University of Hanover until 2019 . Paul Heitjans' research areas concern the areas of material physics and physical solid state chemistry. Heitjans is best known for his nuclear magnetic resonance studies (solid-state NMR spectroscopy , especially beta-NMR) for the diffusion of atoms and ions in condensed matter .

Scientific career

Heitjans studied physics at the Technical University of Berlin and the University of Heidelberg (1966–1971) and received a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation . Already in his diploma thesis (1971) he dealt with NMR measurements on silver halides . He was promoted to Dr. rer. nat. with a thesis on the "spin-lattice relaxation of Li (8) in solid and liquid Li metal", in which he investigated the self-diffusion of lithium and, among other things, determined its Korringa constant . In 1983 he completed his habilitation at the University of Marburg in the physics department with a thesis on the "dynamic properties of condensed matter using the spin relaxation of beta-active nuclei".

From 1972 to 1979 Paul Heitjans was a research assistant at the University of Heidelberg , from 1975 to 1980 visiting researcher at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, later a university assistant at the University of Marburg (1979–1987), then a private lecturer (1983–1987). From 1985 to 1987 he also worked as a visiting scientist at the Institute for Solid State Research at Forschungszentrum Jülich , where he played a key role in the development, construction and operation of a beta-NMR spectrometer at the research reactor in order to study diffusion processes on the atomic length scale. In 1987 he accepted a professorship for physical chemistry at the University of Hanover . After reaching retirement age, he was Lower Saxony professor at the Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Hanover until 2019 .

Research stays: 1980 State University of New York at Albany (USA), 1997 University of Aberdeen (UK), 2002 University of Wales (UK), 2006 University of Newcastle (Australia), then 2010 Université Marseille (France).

From 1995 to 1996 Paul Heitjans was the spokesman for the Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 173 of the German Research Foundation , which was dedicated to the topic of "Local particle movement, transport and chemical reactions in ion crystals". In 1998 he was one of the founders of the Center for Solid State Chemistry (now Leibniz Research Center ZFM) at the University of Hanover and was its spokesman until 2015. In 2009 he initiated the DFG research group FOR 1277 on the subject of "Mobility of Li-Ions in Solids". Heitjans is a member of the editorial board for the journal for physical chemistry and chairman of the advisory board of the Helmholtz Institute Ulm for battery research.

Research work

Paul Heitjans mainly uses the methods of spin-lattice relaxation NMR to study self-diffusion processes in amorphous and nanocrystalline ion conductors . The results are often compared with those from AC and DC conductivity measurements . His results, presented in more than 240 publications (ISI web of science ), concentrate on the following material classes: nanocrystalline ceramics and composites, glasses and nanoglass, intercalation compounds, intermetallic compounds, polymer electrolytes , mechanochemically prepared phases. Model substances that u. a. also include solid electrolytes and active materials for Li-based batteries , he investigated the influence of structural disorder or dimensionality on ion dynamics.

Publications

• Paul Heitjans, Jörg Kärger (Eds.): Diffusion in Condensed Matter - Methods. Materials Models . Springer, 2005, ISBN 978-3-540-72081-2 .
• Paul Heitjans (Ed.), Lithium Ions in Solids - Between Basics and Better Batteries, Z. Phys. Chem. 229 (2015) 1263.
• Paul Heitjans (Ed.), Mobility of Ions in Solids, Z. Phys. Chem. 231 (2017) 1211.

Web links

• Paul Heitjans' working group at Leibniz University Hannover
• Literature by and about Paul Heitjans in the bibliographic database WorldCat

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Heitjans, Paul. In: Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar Online. De Gruyter. Retrieved November 22, 2019.
2. ↑ Leibniz University Hannover: FOR 1277 molife: Mobility of lithium ions in solids. Retrieved November 22, 2019 .