Applied Physics

• The Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials is ranked in the world's top 15 materials research institutes by the Times Higher Education
• Gives access to the highly selective HTMS Honours Master
• Upon successful completion of this Master's degree programme, you will obtain a diploma as Master of Science (MSc.) in Applied Physics (international title). In the Netherlands, you will also be entitled to use the ir. (ingenieur) title

• Specialises in advanced materials at the renowned Zernike Institute, named after our Nobel Prize winner in Physics, Frits Zernike
• Nearly all of our graduates find relevant high-level jobs within 3 months after graduating.

2-year programme; credits per year: 60 ECTS; most courses are 5 ECTS.

For the complete curriculum, please see: https://ocasys.rug.nl/current/catalog/programme/60436

Exchange: All our science and engineering programmes offer study abroad possibilities at a number of partner institutions. Our partners include top-100 universities in Europe (for example in Germany, UK, and Sweden) and in the USA, China, South-East Asia, and South America. Our exchange programmes have a typical duration of one semester and count toward your final degree.

Internship: This programme offers you the opportunity to carry out an internship at a company in the Netherlands or abroad. Our choice of industry partners ranges from large multinationals (such as Shell, Philips, Unilever) to dynamic small-medium enterprises in the Groningen area. The internship has a typical duration of 3 to 4 months and counts towards your final degree.

Nearly all of our graduates find relevant high-level jobs within three months after graduating. The majority of alumni of recent cohorts continued their careers as R&D engineers in an industrial or entrepreneurial environment with job qualifications like product & process development engineer at Johnson & Johnson, design engineer at ASML, project leader at Philips, R&D scientist at Photonis, data scientist at Shell, metrology engineer at FMI Industries, just to name a few.

About 30% of the alumni go on to do a PhD Research Project in the Netherlands (University of Groningen, TU Eindhoven, Erasmus Medical Center) or abroad (KU Leuven, University of Cambridge, Victoria University in Wellington).

Other alumni go on to become a teacher, consultant, analyst, or entrepreneur.

The Master's degree programme in Applied Physics is primarily meant for students who want to become researchers and developers in an industrial environment. Most of our graduates find immediate employment in industry, sometimes in the same company where they have done their Industrial Internship.

The alumni in industry often work as engineers or R&D scientists (ASML, Philips, Lambert Instruments, Thales, etc.) but also in the ICT sector of very different companies, including ABNAMRO, KPN, Deloitte, and others go into consulting (Ecofys, Witteveen & Bos). Next to industry our graduates also often continue on to a PhD project after obtaining their Master's degree, to specialize further in a specific research topic, either in Groningen or elsewhere.

During the Master's degree, teamwork, communication and presentation are important qualities to be developed. In many cases considerable IT skills are developed as well. These general competences, together with the analytical skills typical of researchers, for example problem-solving abilities, guarantee that graduates are widely employable. Most applied physicists find jobs in an entrepreneurial environment where a strong background in physics is necessary.

Applied physics research at the University of Groningen is embedded in the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials and focuses on materials engineering and device physics. There are six main research groups in these fields.

Materials Science

The principal aim of the research programme of the Materials Science group is to search for the relation between the microstructure of materials and its physical properties. The programme concentrates on experimental and theoretical work of the characterization of line defects (dislocations and disclinations) and homo-/heterophase interfaces so as to draw conclusions about the correlation between atomic structure, electronic charge transfer, and physical properties, both structural and functional.

Micromechanics

The mission of this research group is to develop new models and computational tools for the micromechanics of (bio)materials, and to employ these to develop relationships between the internal structure of a material and its mechanical properties. We study (bio)materials and biological processes at a range of length scales, placing special emphasis on multiscale modelling and scale transitions. We cover a wide variety of biological and engineering systems, considering and exploiting the similarities and differences in their behavior.

Nanostructured Materials and Interfaces

The aim of this research group is to investigate the relation between the nanostructure and functional properties of materials. Our research focus is on material structures, surfaces/interfaces, and surface interactions at the nanoscale, including phase change materials, nanoclusters/nanoparticles, nanoresonators, surface forces, friction, and adhesion. Experimental facilities include scanning probe, scanning electron, and transmission electron microscopy. Applications of our research are connected with hydrogen storage, novel NEMS devices and phase change memories.

Photophysics and Opto-electronics

Our group aims to develop novel materials for solar cell and microelectronics applications. The materials we work on have in common that they are solution processable. This property holds the promise of cheap production methods with a low energy demand. Our research focuses on the properties of organic semiconductors and organic/organic interfaces and their application in optoelectronic devices, the physical and optoelectronic properties of carbon nanotubes and hybrid systems, and fabrication of hybrid optoelectronic devices composed by inorganic nanocrystals and organic molecules.

Physics of Nanodevices

We explore new physical phenomena that occur in electronic and opto-electronic device structures with nanoscale dimensions. The dynamics of such devices is often quantum mechanical in nature, but much richer than the dynamics of isolated atoms due to interactions with the solid-state environment. Our research investigates this quantum dynamics, and aims to apply it for new device functionalities.

Device Physics of Complex Materials

Device physics contributes to our present knowledge of emergent behaviour of complex materials and probes its properties by making use of modern experimental tools and techniques based on nanotechnology. Emergent behaviour is prevalent in many complex materials and originates from competing interactions of electronic, magnetic and structural origin.