PhD Student in Ferroelectric Field Effect Transistors

About the role

The Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), the largest research institute for natural and engineering sciences in Switzerland, is recruiting a PhD student for its Physical Properties of Materials group. The project is an international collaboration investigating ferroelectric field effect transistor technologies, and the student will be enrolled in the doctoral programme at ETH Zurich.

Key responsibilities

• Perform epitaxy and characterisation of functional perovskite oxide thin films and their heterostructures
• Establish a composition-structure-function relationship for ferroelectric, semiconducting and metallic materials with collaborators
• Grow metal-ferroelectric-semiconductor multilayers, define and optimise lithographic workflows to turn them into devices, and test and benchmark the layers and multilayers as ferroelectric field effect transistors
• Carry out band structure computations to build a high-performance ferroelectric field effect transistor
• Publish peer-reviewed articles using the collected data

Required profile

• Master's degree or equivalent in materials science, chemistry, physics or a related discipline
• Foundational knowledge of solid-state chemistry and/or physics, with knowledge of semiconductors and ferroelectrics considered advantageous
• Communicative and team-oriented, enjoying an interdisciplinary research environment
• Professional proficiency in written and spoken English; German is an asset

Required skills

• Advantageous: understanding of physical vapour deposition and vacuum infrastructure
• Advantageous: computational studies of electronic structure of materials
• Advantageous: familiarity with cleanroom device fabrication and experience with Python

Applications must be submitted online by 22 November 2026, including referee addresses. The position is based in Villigen PSI, Switzerland.