Congratulations, Dr. Lukas Völkel!

We are delighted to announce the successful PhD defense of Lukas Völkel at the Chair of Electronic Devices (ELD) at RWTH Aachen University. On March 19th, 2026, he defended his dissertation titled “Switching Behavior of Hexagonal Boron Nitride Based Memristors for Applications in Neuromorphic Hardware.”

In his research, Lukas developed a reliable fabrication process for memristive devices based on hexagonal boron nitride and systematically characterized their electrical properties. Moreover, he elucidated the underlying physical mechanisms of resistive switching in h‑BN through an integrated experimental and theoretical investigation. The results of his work have been published in several scientific articles, including in Advanced Functional Materials and npj 2D Materials & Applications.

His research was carried out at the Chair of Electronic Devices at RWTH Aachen University and in the cleanroom facilities of AMO GmbH.

Special thanks go to RWTH colleagues Prof. Rainer Leupers and Prof. Dirk Heberling for their challenging questions during the examination. We would also like to highlight the contribution of Prof. Alwin Daus (University of Stuttgart), who co‑supervised the work during his time in Aachen as an Emmy Noether Junior Group Leader and traveled to Aachen to serve on the examination committee.

The dissertation was conducted within the Aachen Graphene & 2D Materials Center and supported by the NeuroSys Cluster and the NEUROTEC project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space. Additional support came from TRR404 Active‑3D, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

We warmly congratulate Lukas on this outstanding achievement and wish him all the best for his future career.