Sander Mann

This PhD project at AMOLF and the University of Amsterdam explores how to discover and optimize chiral perovskite emitters in carefully designed nanophotonic environments . The work combines automated experimentation, optical characterization, and theory to investigate how material composition, processing conditions, and photonic structure together determine properties such as chirality, emission wavelength, brightness, and stability. You will use an AI-assisted materials optimization robot being developed at AMOLF to run rapid, closed-loop synthesis and characterization across large perovskite parameter spaces. A key part of the project is a highly parallel optical workflow using a spatial light modulator and hyperspectral camera, enabling large-scale exploration of chemical and processing landscapes. The research places special emphasis on 2D and related low-dimensional perovskites and asks whether strong intrinsic material chirality is necessary for strong programmable chirality. The second part of the project pushes material discovery into non-trivial optical environments . Instead of first choosing a material and only later designing the surrounding optical structure, you will synthesize and screen perovskite emitters directly on substrates with tailored resonant or chiral optical responses. This creates opportunities to study how local optical fields, optical metasurfaces, and resonance spatial extent influence material symmetry, crystallization, and light-matter coupling. The project aims to understand how the optical field profile can imprint symmetry onto the material and thereby enhance performance in optoelectronic and photonic integration contexts. You will be based in the Nanoscale Solar Cells group led by Erik Garnett at AMOLF, while also working part time with Sander Mann and Jorik van de Groep at the Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute of the University of Amsterdam. The collaboration gives access to AMOLF's nanolab, ultrafast and chiral microscopes, single-photon microscopy, and full-wave numerical and analytical modelling tools, within a collaborative research environment at Amsterdam Science Park. The position is advertised as a PhD opening in a vibrant, inclusive, and well-supported research setting focused on advanced photonics and materials discovery.