At the recently concluded Pulsed Power and Plasma Science Conference (PPPS 2025), Zhang Dongheyu, a 2021 PhD student from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Applied Electronics (EEA), won the “Outstanding Student Paper Award” for his paper titled “Mode Transition of Periodic Oscillations and Scaling Laws for Laser-Sustained Plasmas.” The paper was supervised by Associate Professor Fu Yangyang from EEA. The paper delves into the flow field instability phenomenon in laser-sustained plasmas, reveals the vortex dynamics mechanism that triggers oscillations, summarizes the parameter influence laws on plasma oscillation frequency, and proposes methods for the transition and regulation of flow field oscillation modes.

Outstanding Student Paper Award Certificate

The IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS) presents the Outstanding Student Paper Award at each ICOPS conference. The awards committee of this year’s conference selected seven students from China, the United States, Germany, and France to participate in the final defense. The expert panel evaluated the papers and live defenses, ultimately awarding four students the Outstanding Student Paper Award.

Associate Professor Fu Yangyang (left), Zhang Donghe Yuyu (center), and PPPS 2025 Conference Chair Professor Georg Müller (right).

The 2025 Pulsed Power and Plasma Science Conference (PPPS 2025) was held in Berlin, Germany. The conference combined the 25th IEEE Pulsed Power Conference (PPC) and the 52nd IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science (ICOPS), hosted by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. The conference covered a wide range of scientific and technological issues in plasma and pulsed power research and is considered one of the largest and most academically influential international conferences in the field.

Faculty and students from EEA actively participated in the conference. During the event, Associate Professor Fu Yangyang gave an invited talk titled "Similarity Laws and Scaling Networks for Capacitive Radio-Frequency Plasmas," while PhD students Lin Chubin, Hong Longkun, Guan Haoyu, and Bai Xinpeng each presented oral reports on topics such as "Two Distinct Symmetry Properties of Space Charge Oscillation in Electron Emission Microdiodes," "The Broadband Radiation Spectrum of a ~50kA Z-Pinch Device and Influential Factors," "Voltage Fluctuation and Airflow Disturbance in Repetitive Nanosecond Pulse Breakdown," and "The Method for Reducing the Particle Size of Silicon Nanoparticles through the Interaction with Atmospheric Multi-Stage Microwave Plasma Torch." Additionally, Associate Professor Fu Yangyang was invited to chair two sessions: "Vacuum Microelectronics and THz Devices + Solid-State HPM" and "Microwave Plasma Interactions (1)."

Associate Professor Fu Yangyang delivering an invited talk at PPPS 2025.

PhD Students Lin Chubin (upper left), Hong Longkun (upper right), Guan Haoyu (lower left), and Bai Xinpeng (lower right) presenting oral reports at PPPS 2025.

Awardee Profile:

Zhang Dongheyu is a 2021 PhD student from EEA at Tsinghua University, focusing on laser-sustained plasma research. During his doctoral studies, he has published four SCI papers in high-level journals such as Physical Review Applied (1), New Journal of Physics (1), Acta Physica Sinica (1), and Analytical Chemistry (1), along with one EI paper. He has also given four oral presentations at international conferences such as AAPPS-DPP and IEEE ICOPS. Zhang has won several awards, including the ICPSA 2024 Best Oral Presentation Award, the AAPPS-DPP 2023 Best Poster Award, and the PPPS 2025 Outstanding Student Paper Award.