Advent calendar - December 1st - Eelco Tekelenburg

In the Zernike Institute Advent Calendar, we are presenting 24 short spotlights in December. In these specials, we highlight PhD students, postdocs, support staff and technicians of our research groups and team - providing a glimpse in their typical day at work. In Episode 1 meet Eelco Tekelenburg, PhD student in the Photophysics & OptoElectronics group of Prof. Maria A. Loi.

I get very excited when I see brightly coloured thin films that emit light very efficiently. Luckily, my work revolves around understanding the photophysics of metal halide perovskites and how the composition and structure changes the desired properties. This effect is clearly observable looking at the perovskite films in the picture, where we changed the elemental composition to tune the emission from deep blue to bright green.

I spend most of my time at work in the ultra-fast laser spectroscopy lab, where I look at the photoluminescence spectra and its dynamics to understand its photophysical properties. Specifically, it is the colour and the intensity of the light that tell me the quality of these materials. These measurements are often complemented by measurement from our confocal laser scanning microscope – my favourite instrument of the whole group – which allows me to see spatial variations of the emitted light.

In this time of the year, I am also teaching in a couple of different courses, which I very much enjoy. That is why I joined a course to obtain my University Teaching Qualification and I would recommend it to any PhD student that would like to further develop their teaching skills. If you want to know my experience as a PhD student in this course, don’t hesitate to contact me!