Prof. Dr. Rainer HILLENBRANDH-Index: 90
Nanoscience research center CIC nanoGUNE in San Sebastian, Basque Country, Spain, EU
Positions: Ikerbasque Professor at the nanoscience research center CIC nanoGUNE in San Sebastian, Basque Country, Spain, where he leads the Nanooptics Group, and a Joint Professor at the University of the Basque Country.
Specialization: Optical near-field nanoscopy; Nanophotonics; Polaritonics
At the NANOCON´25 conference Rainer Hillenbrand will present the plenary talk “Optical near-field nanoscopy”.
Personal Background and Education:
Rainer Hillenbrand studied physics at the Universität Augsburg (1991–1997) and earned his Doctoral degree from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, in 2001 for his work on optical near-field microscopy at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, where he continued as a postdoc (2001–2002) and later led the Nano-Photonics Research Group (2003–2007).
He is currently an Ikerbasque Research Professor and head of the Nanooptics Group at CIC nanoGUNE in San Sebastian, Basque Country, Spain, as well as a Joint Professor at the University of the Basque Country. He is also co-founder of the company neaspec GmbH (2007), now part of attocube systems GmbH (Haar, Germany), which develops and manufactures scanning near-field optical microscopes.
In 2014 he was awarded the Ludwig-Genzel-Price “for the design and development of infrared near-field spectroscopy and the application of the novel spectroscopy method in different fields of natural sciences”.
Research interests:
Hillenbrand’s research focuses on the development of optical near-field nanoscopy and infrared nanospectroscopy, with applications in nanophotonics, polaritonics, and materials science.
His Nanooptics Group at CIC nanoGUNE advances scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM) and Fourier transform infrared nanospectroscopy (nano-FTIR), applying these techniques across diverse scientific and technological fields. Both methods provide wavelength-independent spatial resolution of 10–20 nm at visible, infrared, and terahertz frequencies—surpassing the diffraction limit by up to three orders of magnitude.
In 2010, Hillenbrand was awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant for the project Near-field Spectroscopic Nanotomography at Infrared and Terahertz Frequencies, aimed at developing a 3D nanospectroscopy technique for imaging nanostructures using infrared and terahertz radiation.
Summary of publication activity:
Author and co-author of more than 180 publications in international peer-reviewed journals, with nearly 30.000 total citations and an H-index of 90 (Google Scholar, July 2025). ORCID ID 