Ingrid Mertig is a German materials scientist who is a professor and fellow at the

Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics The Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle (Saale) is a research institute in Germany focused novel materials with useful functionalities. Active research topics includes spintronics, neuromorphic systems, nano-photonics, topologic ...

. She was awarded the

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based not-for-profit learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, physics research, research and applied physics, application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide ...

Max Born Medal and Prize.

Early life and education

Mertig studied physics at

TU Dresden TU Dresden (for , abbreviated as TUD), also as the Dresden University of Technology, is a public research university in Dresden, Germany. It is the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, the largest university in Saxony a ...

. She remained there for her doctoral research, where she studied the influence of point defects on the galvanomagnetic properties (phenomena that occur when a current is passed through a conductor in a magnetic field) of metals. She completed her doctorate in 1982 and was appointed an assistant professor. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the

Joint Institute for Nuclear Research The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR, ), in Dubna, Moscow Oblast (110 km north of Moscow), Russia, is an international research center for nuclear sciences, with 5,500 staff members including 1,200 researchers holding over 1,000 ...

Dubna Dubna ( rus, Дубна́, p=dʊbˈna) is a town in Moscow Oblast, Russia. It has a status of '' naukograd'' (i.e. town of science), being home to the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, an international nuclear physics research center and o ...

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

Research and career

Mertig was made a Fellow at the

in 2007. Her research group study solid state theory. Specifically, she develops material specific descriptions of nanostructured systems. Mertig develops these descriptions using green functions, which can be used to describe thin films, surfaces or heterostructures. The computational effort required to perform these calculations scales with the numbers of atoms, making it possible to evaluate systems of a realistic size. She starts from the atomic structure of a system. Mertig is an expert in spintronics, which make use of an electron's charge and spin degree of freedom, could transform future sensors and information technologies. Mertig performs first-principles electronic structure calculations using

density functional theory Density functional theory (DFT) is a computational quantum mechanical modelling method used in physics, chemistry and materials science to investigate the electronic structure (or nuclear structure) (principally the ground state) of many-body ...

. She has used simulations to understand spin-dependent transport processes in magnetic, metallic and molecular devices. Her calculations can explain spintronic phenomena, including

giant magnetoresistance Giant magnetoresistance (GMR) is a quantum mechanics, quantum mechanical magnetoresistance effect observed in multilayers composed of alternating ferromagnetic and non-magnetic conductive layers. The 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Alb ...

, the

spin Nernst Effect The spin Nernst effect is a phenomenon of spin current generation caused by the thermal flow of electrons or magnons in condensed matter. Under a thermal drive such as temperature gradient or chemical potential gradient, spin-up and spin-down carri ...

and the

spin Hall effect The spin Hall effect (SHE) is a transport phenomenon predicted by Russian physicists Mikhail I. Dyakonov and Vladimir I. Perel in 1971. It consists of the appearance of Spin (physics), spin accumulation on the lateral surfaces of an electric cur ...

. Mertig advised the

German Science and Humanities Council The ''German Science and Humanities Council'' (Wissenschaftsrat, WR) is an advisory body to the German Federal Government and the federal state governments. It makes recommendations on the development of science, research, and the universities, a ...

as an expert in 2017–2018. In 2024, she was awarded the

Max Born Medal and Prize.

Selected publications

* * *

References

Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people) German women physicists German materials scientists Max Planck Institutes researchers TU Dresden alumni {{Improve categories, date=January 2025