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Curriculum Docente

PROF. DR. ING. ANGELO DI BERNARDO

SYNOPSIS OF RESEARCH INTERESTS

The research activity of the group of prof. Di Bernardo concerns the investigation of unconventional phenomena and physical effects emerging from the coupling of materials with radically-different properties like, for example, superconducting and magnetic materials.

The research group has expertise in the synthesis of a variety of quantum material hybrids combining materials in different forms such as single crystals, thin films, and van der Waals flakes. In addition to using their lab facilities for the characterisation of the structural and magnetotransport properties of these hybrids (down to low temperatures), prof. Di Bernardo and his group are also interested in an in-depth characterization of the physics emerging at the interfaces or surfaces of these material systems. To this purpose, the group uses a variety of local magnetometry or spectroscopic techniques to which they have regularly access either via external collaborators (e.g., low-temperature scanning tunneling spectroscopy, nitrogen-vacancy magnetometry, SQUID-on-tip) or via beamline facilities (e.g., low-energy muon rotation spectroscopy, X-ray magnetic circular dichroism, Resonant inelastic X-ray scattering, ultrafast THz pump-probe spectroscopy).

Once novel physical effects are discovered, the group then engineers and fabricates nanoscale-size devices based on the hybrids that host these effects. Another main goal of the group is in fact to develop devices that can support information transport with low energy dissipation, and find applications in energy-efficient high-performance computing or in emerging quantum technologies.

PERSONAL INFORMATION

  • Family name, First name: Di Bernardo, Angelo
  • Date of birth: 18-06-1987
  • Researcher identifiers:
  1. Orcid - 0000-0002-2912-2023
  2. Scopus ID - 55262979800
  3. Google Scholar - https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=z8-1ck4AAAAJ&hl=en

CURRENT POSITIONS

  • 2023-to date Associate Professor, Physics Department, University of Salerno, Italy with joint temporary affiliation with Physics Department, University of Konstanz, Germany
  • 2019-to-date Sofja Kovalevskaja Group Leader, Physics Department, University of Konstanz, Germany

PREVIOUS POSITIONS

  • 2020-2023 Associate Professor (W2 Professor), Physics Department, University of Konstanz,Germany
  • 2016-2019 Junior Research Fellow, Materials Science Department, Univ. of Cambridge, UK

SCIENTIFIC HABILITATION

  • Italian national scientific habilitation as Full Professor in the scientific sector 02/B1 (Experimental Condensed Matter Physics) since 2023.

EDUCATION

  • 2012-2016 NanoDTC Ph.D. (1 year M.Sc. + 3 years Ph.D.), University of Cambridge, UK Thesis title: “Unconventional superconducting states at superconductor interfaces.” Supervisor: prof. J. Robinson. Passed exam with no corrections (top and rare achievement in Cambridge).
  • 2011-2012 M.Sc. in Nanoscience, Arizona State University, USA. Final GPA: 4.0/4.0.
  • 2008-2011 Second Cycle Degree (M.Sc.) in BioEngineering, University of Naples, Italy. Final grade: 110/110 Cum Laude; average exam grade: 29.91/30 (7 of 18 exams Cum Laude).
  • 2005-2008 First Cycle Degree (B.Sc.) in BioEngineering, University of Naples, Italy. Final grade: 110/110 Cum Laude; average exam grade: 29.83/30 (11 of 32 exams Cum Laude).

HONOURS AND AWARDS

prof. Di Bernardo has been awarded several scientific prizes throughout his academic career, in particular first for his results that have confirmed the existance of spin-polarised states at the superconductor/ferromagnet interfaces and then, more recently, for the discovery of other unknown physical effects including p-wave superconductivity in graphene, nodal exchange coupling in oxide superconducting spin valves, and unconventional orbital loop current magnetism. A list of these prizes is reported below.

  • 2022 Nicholas Kurti Science Prize for Europe 2022 (with Oxford Instrument sponsorship). Prize awarded to a European researcher working in the research field of low-temperature Physics.
  • 2019–2024 Sofja Kovalevskaja Award, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. One of 6 awards (1.65 M€) in Germany for international applicants from all fields in 2019.
  • 2016–2019 Junior Research Fellowship, St John’s College, Cambridge, UK. One of 5 fellowships (~£100k) in 2016 out of more than 700 applications from all fields.
  • 2018 Brian Pippard Prize, IOP, UK. Most prestigious prize awarded to a UK scientist working in the field of superconductivity.
  • 2017 ESAS Prize for Young Researchers. Awarded biannually to a young researcher in the field of superconductivity.
  • 2016 International IEEE Graduate Fellowship Award. One of the 5 international awardees ($5k) selected by the IEEE Council on Superconductivity.
  • 2012–2016 George and Lillian Schiff Foundation Studentship, University of Cambridge, UK. Only Ph.D. studentship awarded in 2012 for students in Natural Sciences and Engineering.
  • 2011 Fulbright Scholarship, The US-Italy Fulbright Commission. One of 3 national recipients ($38k) out of ~ 1000 applicants for all disciplines.
  • 2009 Guglielmo D’Ambrosio award, University of Naples, Italy for the best student of the Engineering Department with more than 3,000 students enrolled.

RESEARCH GRANTS (€ listed below for each grant is only the grant portion awarded to prof. Di Bernardo)

Since he became a principal investigator in 2019, prof. Di Bernardo has been awarded ~ 2.7 million euros as individual contributions to carry out research projects on a variety of different topics spanning from fundamental to applied research. He has also been selected twice for an interview (stage 2) of an EU ERC starting grant, and in one case (ERC-StG 2022 call) his proposal has also been approved for funding but put on the reserve list (due to budget limitations).

  • 11/2023-11/2025 MAECI reearch grant for project "ULTRAQUMAT" - main PI (~ 100 k€).
  • 05/2021–05/2024 Zukunftskolleg Research Fellowship for project “Superconducting Spintronics”, University of Konstanz - only PI (~ 350 k€).
  • 10/2019-09/2024 Sofja Kovalevskaja grant for research project “Superconducting spintronics with oxide and 2D materials”, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation - only PI (1.65 M€).
  • 03/2021-08/2024 European Union (EU) FET-OPEN grant for research project “Gate Tunable Superconducting Quantum Electronics (SuperGate)” - co-PI, leader of Work package 1 (~ 313 k€).
  • 09/2020-08/2023 and 04/2024-03/2027 Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) SPP 2244 grant for research project “Towards 2D superconducting spintronics.” The grant has funded first for three years, and then for additional three years as part of the 2nd call for projects of the SPP 2244 program - co-PI (~ 95 k€ in the first three years and ~ 112 k€ for the following three years).
  • 10/2020-12/2021 Young Scholar Fund (YSF) grant for research project “Superconducting molecular electronics (SuperMol)” – University of Konstanz, only PI (~ 80 k€).

PUBLICATIONS AND TALKS

  • Has co-authored about 40 articles to date (March 2024), of which 33 already published, 5 under review and 1 monograph in Nature News and Views. Most of his articles as leading author (4 as first author and 9 as last author to March 2024) are in high-IF journals including Nature Communications, Nature Materials, Physical Review X etc.

For an up-to-date list of publications see Google Scholar profile at: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=z8-1ck4AAAAJ&hl=en. A selection of the 10 most relevant papers is reported below (the symbol '*' denotes corresponding authorship):

  1. A. Spuri, D. Nikolić, S. Chakraborty, M. Klang, H. Alpern, O. Millo, H. Steinberg, W. Belzig, E. Scheer, A. Di Bernardo*. Signature of long-ranged spin triplets across a two-dimensional superconductor/helimagnet van der Waals interface, Physical Review Research 6, L012046 (2024). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.L012046
  2. R. Hartmann, M. Hogen, D. Lignon, A. K. C. Tan, M. Amado, S. El-Khatib, M. Egilmez, B. Das, C. Leighton, M. Atature, E. Scheer, A. Di Bernardo*. Intrinsic giant magnetoresistance due to exchange-bias-type effects at the surface of single-crystalline NiS2 nanoflakes, Nanoscale 15, 10277-10285 (2023). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D3NR00467H
  3. A. Di Bernardo*. Broken mirror symmetry boosts current conversion in a superconductor, Nature 613, 446 (2023). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00027-y
  4. R. Fittipaldi, R. Hartmann, M. T. Mercaldo, S. Komori, A. Bjorlig, W. Kyung, Y. Yasui, T. Miyoshi, L. A. B. Olde Olthof, C. M. Palomares Garcia, V. Granata, I. Keren, W. Higemoto, A. Suter, T. Prokscha, A. Romano, C. Noce, C. Kim, Y. Maeno, E. Scheer, B. Kalisky, J. W. A. Robinson, M. Cuoco, Z. Salman, A. Vecchione, A. Di Bernardo*. Unveiling unconventional magnetism at the surface of Sr2RuO4, Nature Communications 12, 5892 (2021). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26020-5

  5. H. Alpern, M. Amundsen, R. Hartmann, N. Sukenik, A. Spuri, S. Yochelis, T. Prokscha, V. Gutkin, Y. Anahory, E. Scheer, J. Linder, Z. Salman, O. Millo, Y. Paltiel, A. Di Bernardo*. Unconventional Meissner screening induced by chiral molecules in a conventional superconductor, Physical Review Materials 5, 114081 (2021). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.5.1148

  6. A. Di Bernardo*, S. Komori, G. Livanas, G. Divitini, P. Gentile, M. Cuoco, J.W.A. Robinson. Nodal superconducting exchange coupling, Nature Materials 18, 1194 (2019). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0476-3

  7. E. M. Choi, A. Di Bernardo, B. Zhu, P. Lu, K.H.L. Zhang, H. Alpern, T. Shapira, J. Feighan, X. Sun, J.W.A. Robinson, Y. Paltiel, O. Millo, H. Wang, Q. Jia, J.L. MacManus-Driscoll. 3D strain-induced superconductivity in La2CuO4+δ using a simple vertically aligned nanocomposite approach, Science Advances 5, eaav5532 (2019). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aav5532

  8. A. Di Bernardo, Y. Kalcheim, M. Barbone, M. Amado, D. De Fazio, U. Sassi, A. Ott, J. Linder, A.C. Ferrari, O. Millo, J.W.A. Robinson. P-wave triggered superconductivity in single-layer graphene on an electron-doped oxide superconductor, Nature Communications 8, 14024 (2017). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1402

  9. A. Di Bernardo, Z. Salman, X.L. Wang, M. Amado, M. Egilmez, M.G. Flokstra, A. Suter, S.L. Lee, J.H. Zhao, T. Prokscha, E. Morenzoni, M.G. Blamire, J. Linder, J.W.A. Robinson. Intrinsic paramagnetic Meissner effect due to s-wave odd frequency superconductivity, Physical Review X 5, 041021 (2015). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.5.041021

  10. A. Di Bernardo, S. Diesch, Y. Gu, J. Linder, E. Scheer, M.G. Blamire, J.W.A. Robinson. Signature of magnetic-dependent gapless odd frequency states at superconductor/ferromagnet interfaces, Nature Communications 6, 8053 (2015). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9053

  • Has given more than 50 talks to date (March 2024) of which 47 on invitation at international seminars, workshops, or conferences (5 on average in the last 3 years). The full list of talks is available at https://www.dibernardo.uni-konstanz.de/research/talks/. A selection of 10 invited talks/invited lectures is given below:
  1. 776. WE-Heraeus Seminar, Bad Honnef, Germany (4th-6th Jan. 2023).
  2. DPG Meeting (invited lecture), Regensburg, Germany (4th-9th Sept. 2022).
  3. 769. WE-Heraeus Seminar, Bad Honnef, Germany (29th May-2nd Jun. 2022).
  4. OSS Workshop 2021, Kyoto, Japan (13th-17th Dec. 2021).
  5. QuSpin Workshop 2021, NTNU, Norway (1st-2nd Dec. 2021).
  6. 7th ICSM international conference, Bodrum, Turkey (22nd-28th Oct. 2021).
  7. Nanocohybrid workshop, Paris, France (12th-14th Oct. 2021).
  8. 15th International workshop on Magnetism and Superconductivity, Coma-Ruga, Spain (1st-5th Jul. 2019).
  9. Two lectures on superconducting devices, OSS Workshop 2017, Kyoto, Japan (25th-29th Nov. 2017).
  10. Three lectures on superconductivity and magnetism, ESAS School, Pozzuoli, Italy (12th-16th Dec. 2016).

SUPERVISION OF GRADUATE STUDENTS AND POSTDOCS

Department of Physics, University of Konstanz

  • 2019-to date Mentor/supervisors of 2 Postdocs, 6 Ph.D. candidates, with additional 5 M.Sc. students and 3 B.Sc. students and who already graduated from 2020 to 2024.

Department of Materials Science, University of Cambridge, UK

  • 2016-2019 Co-supervision of 1 Ph.D. candidate

TEACHING ACTIVITIES

  • 2023-2024 Course "Fundamentals of Solid-State Physics" (20 hours; summer semester), Department of Physics, University of Salerno.
  • 2023-2024 Course "Physics of materials and nanotechnologies for renawable energies" (120 hours; winter and summer semesters), Department of Physics, University of Salerno.
  • 2019–2023 Course “Superconductivity: from fundamentals to applications” (26 lectures; winter semester), Department of Physics, University of Konstanz.
  • 2019-2023 Course “Nanofabrication and nanocharacterisation techniques” (26 lectures; winter semester), Department of Physics, University of Konstanz.
  • 2022 Seminar course “Advances in Nanomaterials”, Department of Physics, University of Konstanz.
  • 2018–2019 Course “Materials aspects of microdevices” (6 lectures), University of Cambridge.
  • 2017–2019 Course “Nanomagnetism” (3 lectures), University of Cambridge.

ORGANISATION OF SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS

  • 2024 Conference chair and co-organiser of international workshop "SUPERGATE2024" on recent advances in superconducting materials and phenomena, and in their control via gate voltage, Paestum (Italy), 6th-9th October 2024.
  • 2023 Co-organiser of the mini-colloquium session “Magnet/superconductor hybrids for quantum information science and Technology” at the Condensed Matter Division (CMD) conference of the European Physics Conference in Milan (CMD30-FisMat2023), 4th-8th September 2023.
  • 2023 Co-organiser of the international workshop on “Unconventional Superconducting phenomena”, Schloss Ringberg (Germany), 30th May-2nd June 2023.
  • 2023 Co-organiser of focused session on unconventional transport in low-dimensional heterostructures for DPG meeting 2023, Dresden, 26th-31st March 2023.
  • 2020 Co-organiser of colloquium "Symmetry and non-linearity in low-dimensional systems" (online), 31st August - 1st September 2020
  • 2018 Co-organiser of international symposium - “Superconducting Spintronics and Majorana Physics”, University of Cambridge, 15th-16th March 2018.

INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES

  • 2023-to date Faculty member, Department of Physics, University of Salerno.
  • 2023-to date External reviewer for professorship applications (several Universities).
  • 2020-to date External Ph.D. examiner (Uppsala University, Scuola Normale Superiore, Leiden University).
  • 2019-to date Graduate student advisor, University of Konstanz.
  • 2019-2023 Faculty member, Department of Physics, University of Konstanz.
  • 2017-2019 Deputy Dean of Discipline, St John's College, University of Cambridge.

REVIEWING AND EDITORIAL ACTIVITIES

  • 2022-to date Associate Editor for the Journal of Low Temperature Physics.
  • 2019-to date Reviewer for grant proposals including DFG grants, Alexander von Humboldt, UKRI grants and EU (ERC-Advanced) grants.
  • 2016-to date Reviewer for international scientific journals (more than 20) including: Nature, Nat. Commun., npj Quantum Mater., Sci. Rep., Phys. Rev. X, Phys. Rev. Lett., Phys. Rev. Res., Nano Lett., Adv. Mater., ACS Nano, ACS Appl. Electron. Mater., EPL, APL, APL Mater., Phys. Status Solidi B, Beilstein J. Nanotechnol., Thin Solid Films.

MEMBERSHIPS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

  • 2024-to date Member of the European Physical Society (EPS).
  • 2023-to date Member of the Italian Physical Society (SIF), Italy.
  • 2021-to date Member of the Association of Engineers (in the province of Naples), Italy.
  • 2019-2023 Member of the Deutsche Physikalische Geselleschaft (DPG), Germany.

MAJOR COLLABORATIONS

  • Elke Scheer and Wolfgang Belzig, University of Konstanz, Germany (2D superconducting spintronics, scanning tunneling microscopy, theory of mesoscopic superconductivity).
  • Zaher Salman and Thomas Prokscha, PSI, Switzerland (low-energy muon spin rotation spectroscopy).
  • Carmine Attanasio and Carla Cirillo, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy (non-centro symmetric superconductors).
  • Mario Cuoco and Antonio Vecchione, CNR-Spin, Italy (theory of strongly correlated oxides, oxide crystals).
  • Francesco Giazotto, CNR-Nano, Italy (gate-controlled superconductivity).
  • Jacob Linder, NTNU, Norway (theory of superconductor/ferromagnet systems).
  • Sebastian Bergeret, Materials Physics Centre, Donostia, Spain (2D superconducting spintronics theory).
  • Jason Robinson and Mete Atatüre, University of Cambridge, UK (2D superconducting spintronics, NV magnetometry).
  • Andrea Ferrari, University of Cambridge, UK (2D van der Waals materials and heterostructures).
  • Oded Millo, Yossi Paltiel, Hadar Steinberg, and Yonatahan Anahory, Racah Institute of Physics, Israel (scanning tunneling microscopy, chiral molecules/superconductors hybrids, tunneling spectroscopy on 2D materials, SQUID-on-tip magnetometry).
  • Beena Kalisky, Bar-Ilan University, Israel (scanning SQUID microscopy).
  • Yoshiteru Maeno, Kyoto University, Japan (superconductivity in Sr2RuO4).
  • Changyoung Kim, Seoul National University, South Korea (low-energy electron diffraction, oxide systems).