Volker Deckert receives international Lippincott Award

The 2020 Ellis R. Lippincott Award will be presented to Volker Deckert, „for ongoing contributions to high-resolution Raman spectroscopy, in particular the realization of tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, allowing label-free structural surface characterization down to the single-molecule level.“ With the annual award in memory of Professor Ellis R. Lippincott, the Optical Society (OSA), the Coblentz Society and the Society for Applied Spectroscopy honour scientists who have made significant contributions to vibrational spectroscopy as judged by their influence on other scientists. Presentation of the 2020 award is planned at SciX, 11 – 16 October 2020, in Sparks, Nevada.

Volker Deckert leads the research department Nanoscopy at Leibniz IPHT and is a Professor for Physical Chemistry at the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena. He obtained his Diploma and his Ph.D. from the University of Würzburg, working on Raman spectroscopy. After a postdoc at the University of Tokyo, he started his research on near-field optical spectroscopy, first at the ETH Zurich, then in Dresden and Dortmund before he finally came to Jena.
Volker Deckert’s research focuses on Raman spectroscopy, near-field optical microscopy, and plasmon enhancement. „Ma major goal is to extend the limits of spatial resolution for label-free techniques, particularly for methods based on tip-enhanced Raman scattering (TERS)“, Volker Deckert says. His research is mainly driven by questions related to chemical and/or bio-related problems that require structural information at the highest possible resolution: e.g. the structure of diamonds. These studies then help to understand the underlying theoretical concepts of the often-surprising lateral resolution.