Abnormal grain growth as a method to enhance the thermoelectric performance of Nb-doped strontium titanate ceramics

Alexander Tkach

University of Aveiro

Oleksandr (Alexander) Tkach graduated in Microelectronics and Semiconductor Devices by the National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” in June 1999, investigating nanocrystalline silicon for optoelectronic applications. In September 2005 he got his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Aveiro, Portugal, working on strontium titanate based ceramics for tunable device applications. This was followed by a 1.5 year post-doctoral fellow in the same group, including participation in European Network of Excellence FAME (2006-2008) and EU FP6 STREP project MULTICERAL (multiferroics preparation). Since June 2007 Dr. Tkach has been post-doctoral fellow by Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in University of Porto, Portugal, working on alkali tantalates and other perovskite ceramics and thin films, participating as well in a bilateral Portugal / Germany - GRICES / DAAD project (2008) and 2 FCT projects (2008-2012). In December 2012, he got post-doc contract at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany, within EU FP7 project IFOX, investigating artificial multiferroic heterostructures and contributing to the photoemission-electron-microscopy synchrotron beam-times. In February 2014 he was promoted to Auxiliary Researcher position at the University of Aveiro, CICECO, coordinating FCT Independent Researcher Starting Grant “Multifunctional all-oxide nanostructures for electronic applications”. Since April 2014 Dr. Tkach participates in European Cooperation in Science and Technology COST action MP1308 TO-BE - Toward oxide based electronics. He is a member of the European Ceramic Society from January 2017. In January 2018 he was offered an Editorial board membership in International Journal of Materials Science and Applications, Science Publishing Group. - Oleksandr (Alexander) Tkach has published 1 book chapter and 67 papers in SCI journals, including Nature Physics, Advanced Functional Materials, Chemistry of Materials and Physical Review Letters, with ca. 1,000 citations (h-index 20). From 25 publications by Dr. Tkach in the top quartile JCR SCI journals in their areas, 6 papers are published in the highest IF journal of specific area Materials Science - Ceramics (Journal of the European Ceramics Society) and 5 in the area Metallurgy and Metallurgical Engineering (Acta Materialia), while 1 more publication was done in the second highest IF journal of the area Multidisciplinary Physics (Nature Physics). He has coordinated 2 post-docs and supervised 2 Master students. He has accepted 2 offers to give invited talks at international conferences and was an organizing committee member of 3 scientific meetings, crowned by VIII International Symposium on Materials “MATERIAIS 2017” with ~400 participants. He has been a referee for 17 journals in Materials Science, Physics and Chemistry.