Fabio Donati receives the Max-Auwärter Award 2018
Fabio Donati
Dr Fabio Donati has received the Max-Auwärter Award 2018 from the Austrian Physical Society for his work on magnetic remanence of single magnets performed in the Laboratory of Nanostructures at Interfaces.
The Max Auwärter Award for students and young researchers is offered bi-annually by the Max Auwärter Foundation in Balzers, Principality of Liechtenstein. It is open to scientists up to 35 years old based in universities and research institutions who have published significant work in the fields of surface physics, surface chemistry, or organic and inorganic thin films. The award includes a certificate and a prize of 10.000 Euro.
Fabio Donati got the award for having contributed to the discovery of single atom magnets, demonstrating that individual holmium atoms on MgO(100) thin films grown on Ag(100) exhibit magnetic remanence. Thereby they are the smallest possible permanent magnets. Later, reading and writing of the magnetization of individual Ho atoms on MgO has been proven, therefore demonstrating magnetic information storage in the smallest unit of matter, a single atom. This work was performed while Fabio Donati was a postdoc in the Laboratory of Nanostructures at Surfaces of Prof Harald Brune. Fabio Donati is now Research Professor at the Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea.