People

Rozita received her bachelor and master degrees in physics – solid state in Iran. During her master project, she worked on the fabrication and characterization of p-n ZnO-based heterojunction photodiodes. She joined WBGM group in 2016 as a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. dr. Ken Haenen. For her thesis, she focused on the growth optimization of single crystal boron doped diamond for high‑power electronics. During her PhD, she was involved in different projects such as GreenDiamond EU H2020 and she became expert in CVD diamond growth, lithography, semiconductor electrical characterizations, material deposition by PVD, and etc. She obtained her PhD diploma in physics from Hasselt University in May 2021. After that, she works in the group as a postdoctoral researcher. Her research is mostly focused on the growth and characterization of monocrystalline diamond films doped by different elements such as phosphorus, boron, nitrogen, and etc.  Her work also involves material characterization techniques, such as SEM, AFM, Hall effect.

Rani joined the WBGM group in June 2018. Her research topic focuses on growth studies of colour centres in diamond, in particular, germanium vacancy centres in CVD diamond. She also investigates stress evolution in nanocrystalline diamond films.

Giridharan Krishnamurthy is a PhD student in WBGM group working on 2D hexagonal boron nitride thin film materials. He hails from Coimbatore, India, where he finished his schooling as well as his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at Coimbatore Institute of Technology in 2014. Further, he pursued his Master of Science degree in Materials Science and Engineering, specializing in Materials for energy and environmental impact at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. His graduate thesis work was on ‘Palladium metal membranes for hydrogen gas separation with titanium as an intermediate adhesive layer’.

After his graduation in 2016, he started working as a Design Engineer at Railtechniek van Herwijnen BV in Tiel, the Netherlands. In 2018, he then worked as a research intern on Comparative study of ZnO, ZnS and Zn(O,S) thin films grown by Chemical bath deposition for buffer layer application in solar cells, in the Department of Physics at PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, India. From the mid of 2019, he started his PhD research career in our WBGM group at IMO-IMOMEC working on sputtering, characterization and structural growth analysis of 2D hexagonal boron nitride thin film nanowalls and its potential use of the material towards water purification application. He also works on the sputtering of other materials like AlN.

Before joining the WBGM group, Emerick did his master thesis at the University of Namur in the field of numerical optics and photonics. He developed a program that model optical properties of anisotropic laterally structured multilayers to provide a useful tool to study natural photonics structures or nanostructure such as graphene nanoribbons.

He pursued his work on numerical physics by joining the WBGM group to investigate the atomic scale processes happening during diamond growth at CVD conditions. Using VASP implementation of DFT and the climbing nudged elastic band method, he computes the energy barrier for many different reactions needed to grow diamond. He also looks at the influence of dopants on those barriers to find the optimal conditions of doped-diamond growth.

Essraa Ahmed is a PhD student in the WBGM of UHasselt currently studying charge transfer between diamond electrodes and Cyanobacteria. Essraa has a master degree in physics from Stellenbosch University where she worked on developing a near infrared femtosecond laser source for observation of charge transfer processes in semiconductors. Essraa's current research project focuses on studying the photosynthesis performance of diamond electrodes functionalized by Cyanobacteria under gamma irradiation.

Nora obtained her bachelor's degree in Biomedical Sciences at Hasselt University in 2020. She is currently completing her master’s degree in Bioelectronics and Nanotechnology focussing on the development of a diamond-based impedance biosensor to monitor cyanobacterial growth for her thesis. During her free time, Nora enjoys baking, hiking, and spending time with family, friends, and her two dogs.