2015-December-22
Our research on strontium ruthenate surfaces shows how water dissociates and strips off one hydrogen atom upon adsorption. Although the hydrogen atom and the remaining OH group are physically separated, the pieces continue to interact through a weak hydrogen bond. This interaction leads to an interesting dynamic behavior, where the OH group circles the stripped off hydrogen atom. The result were published in Nature Materials. Click twice on the gif file on the right and watch the water dance.
The paper
TU press release in English or German ·
Article in Der Standard
2015-Dec-2
2015-Nov-5
2015-Oct-28
The
European Academy of Sciences established the Blaise Pascal Medal in 2003 to recognize an outstanding and demonstrated personal contribution to science and technology and the promotion of excellence in research and education. Up to six medals may be awarded in any one year. This year Ulrike Diebold was honored with the Blaise Pascal Metal in Materials Science.
2015-September-29
With the start of the new semester, the Austrian newspaper
"Die Presse" published an article on students doing research. Matthias Poglitsch
described how he liked working with us during his bachelor thesis (in German).
2015-September-10
Our “magnetite subgroup” around Gareth Parkinson and Roland Bliem, with the help of our guest Jessi van der Hoeven from Utrecht, could nicely show how a prototype catalytic reaction works. They find that CO oxidation on their model catalyst, tiny platinum clusters on magnetite, eats the oxygen from the magnetite support, and platinum helps to oxidize the support again. They could also investigate in detail what happens if hydrogen is oxidized with the help of the catalyst. These results provide the groundwork to improve catalysts and got published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
The paper
TU press release in English or German ·
"Die Presse" newspaper article
2015-September
Many of us are swarming out this month, to learn new things and to report on our research results. Roland Bliem, Michele Riva, Daniel Halwidl, Michael Schmid, and Peter Varga attend this year's
ECOSS in Barcelona. Margareta Wagner, Martin Setvin, Jake Choi, Ulrike Diebold, Stefan Gerhold, Jonas Gloss, Peter Lackner report at the joint meeting of the
Austrian and Swiss Physics Societies. Gareth Parkinson lectures at the
GRC Summer School on Characterization of Metal Oxides near Berlin. Oscar Gamba gives a talk at a
catalysis conference in Colombia, and Martin Setvin travels to the
Non-Contact AFM conference in France.
2015-August-28
Roland Bliem attends the
Suncat Summer School at Stanford and wins a best poster award. Congratulations!
2015-August-13
This week, no less than four papers were accepted for publication in various journals. The picture shows our first authors: Stefan Gerhold's
paper on NiO on SrTiO
3(110) was accepted in J. Phys. Chem. C, and so was Oscar's
paper on formic acid on Fe
3O
4. Roland's work on the adsorption and incorporation of transition metals in magnetite was accepted in
Phys. Rev. B. Another paper, on imaging TiO
2(110) in aqueous solution with
STM, spearheaded our collaborators in
Rome, was accepted in
Advanced Materials Interfaces. Also, the weather has been really hot. Time for some beer!
2015-July
Three students from Brno have been with us since February. Adam Zavodny took many interesting
STM images of single adatoms on Fe
3O
4, Zdenek Jakub helped with our electrochemistry setups, and Michal Horky grew fcc-stabilized Fe films. It has been a pleasure and privilege working with them.
2015-July-15
This year, we hike in the Wienerwald. We conquer the
Anninger, stop at Ruine Mödling, and relax in Peter Varga's house in Maria Enzersdorf with lots of cold drinks.
2015-July
2015-June-30
Margareta Wagner received a
Hertha Firnberg Award for her research programme “Organic Molecules on Transparent Conductive Oxides: Fundamental studies”. The Hertha Firnberg programme of the
Austrian Science Fund (FWF) aims at boosting the career of extremely well qualified female scientists.
Watch this
Youtube video provided by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), showing an interview with Ulrike Diebold (in German) and scenes from our labs. Seems we are quite a photogenic group!
2015-June-15
Jonas Gloss joins the group as a PhD student. He is working with Peter Varga and researchers from
Ceitec in Brno on producing magnetic metamaterials with focused ion beams.
2015-June-10
2015-June-08
Gareth Parkinson of the Surface Physics Group has received the
START Prize, the highest Austrian award for outstanding young researchers. Congratulations! The prize money will enable him to pursue research on single-atom catalysis during the next six years. We have now two START awardees and one
Wittgenstein and
ERC Advanced Grant laureate in our group, almost the highest density of these prizes anywhere!
TU press release (German)
2015-March
Matthias Müllner joins as a PhD student and Michele Riva, who visited with us from the Politecnico Milano previously, returned as post-doc. Matthias will work on our electrochemistry project, and Michele on the oxide PLD. Here the two of them are captured during our daily lunch in the Mensa.
2015-March-20
2015-January-18
Stijn Mertens co-organized the rather successful
583rd Heraeus Seminar. The meeting, which took place at the
Physikzentrum Bad Honnef, was dedicated to the emerging field of electrochemical surface science. Ulrike Diebold gave a keynote lecture, and Jan Balajka presented a poster.
2014-December-05
A team around Gareth Parkinson of the Surface Physics group has solved a long-standing mystery: No one could explain why the magnetite Fe3O4(001) surface behaves differently than all other oxides. It turned out that this surface has a very peculiar crystal structure, which requires a new way of thinking about oxide surfaces in general. The results have been published in the prestigious journal Science.
Article in Science
TU press release
Media coverage: ORF Science · Die Presse · der Standard · Salzburger Nachrichten
2014-October-1
2014-September
Luckily, some of us stayed home and got some work done.
2014-August-26
Jessi van der Hoeven from the
University of Utrecht, who has been visiting with us for the past half year, is returning to the Netherlands. As a farewell, she gives a presentation of her research to her advisor,
Prof. Petra de Jongh, with the group listening in. Jessi shows us beautiful results on Pt nanoclusters and their role in catalysis. Watch out for papers to come!
2014-August-19
Bernhard wins the jackpot of the group's soccer world cup bet, and is obliged to treat us all to beer. Also, his paper “A strong chemical reaction of CO with the surface of Sr
3Ru
2O
2” by B. Stöger et al. has been accepted in
PRL. Time for a a little Happy Hour.
2014-August-10
Several papers got accepted this week: “A direct view of polarons in TiO
2 rutile and anatase” by Martin Setvin et al. in
PRL; “Reducing the In
2O
3(111) Surface Results in Ordered Indium Adatoms” by Margareta Wagner et al. in
Advanced Materials Interfaces; “Stabilizing Single Ni adatoms on a Two-dimensional Porous Titania on SrTiO
3(110) Surface” by Zhiming Wang et al. in
J. Phys. Chem. C; and “Identification of Adsorbed Molecules Via Tip Manipulation: CO, H
2O, and O
2 on TiO
2 Anatase (101)” by Martin Setvin et al. in
PCCP. To top it off, all this happened while the boss was vacationing in Croatia.
2014-July-11
2014-July-8
The group enjoys an outing. We hike up the
Hohe Wand.
2014-June-28
2014-June
Our post-docs Zhiming Wang and Xianfeng Hao leave the group. Zhiming is joining the
ARPES group of Felix Baumberger in Geneva, Switzerland, and Xianfeng returns home to his
university in China. We had a productive time together, and a lot of fun. All the best to both of them!
2014-June-06
2014-June-04
Today Daniel Halwidl successfully defended his Masters thesis. Here he proudly presents the molecular beam, which he designed, built, and tested in his thesis work.
2014-May-11
The Austrian Academy of Sciences
ÖAW has different levels of membership. Ulrike Diebold has been a 'corresponding member' since 2012, and was elected a 'full member' in April 2014.
List of all new ÖAW members.
der standard
2014-Apr-26
2014-Apr-22
The surface physics group gets additional help. Our new “
UHV Technician”, Martin Leichtfried, joins us.
2014-Apr-11
Excess electrons in TiO
2 anatase are usually delocalized and behave as quasi-free particles. They are trapped, however, at defects such as steps. This is undesired in applications where a high electrical conductivity is essential, such as the Graetzel cell. On the other hand, electron localization can be beneficial in chemical applications. For example, oxygen prefers to adsorb close to surface steps. These effects are clearly seen in
STM and NC-AFM images taken by Martin Setvin and other members of the surface physics group. The experimental results have been confirmed in theoretical calculations by Xianfeng Hao, Cesare Franchini, and Geoerg Kresse from
Computational Materials Physics, University of Vienna.
The results were published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
Link to original publication ·
TU press release
2014-March-25
Three students started in our group this month. The photo shows (from left to right) Jakub Piastek from Brno, Czech Republic; Jessi van der Hoeven from Utrecht, Netherlands; and Michele Riva from Milan, Italy. Our new friends will be staying with us for 6 months and will participate in various research projects. Jessi and Jakub are supported by the
Erasmus program.
2014-Mar-14
Our group helped organize the
27th '3S conference in St. Christoph/Arlberg. With more than 80 participants, excellent science, and enjoyable outdoor activities the conference was a success.
2014-Mar-04
The SrTiO
3(110) surface forms a reconstruction that consists of a monolayer TiO
2, but in a special, rather unreactive - tetrahedrally coordinated - form. When oxygen vacancies are created in this layer, they move to the SrTiO
3 interface, where the resulting excess electrons form a two-dimensional gas (2DEG). Zhiming Wang, Stefan Gerhold and Bernhard Stöger from the surface physics group have measured the electronic structure of this electron gas at the synchrotron
Bessy in Berlin. (There they also took the happy photo at the right.) Different from other, known 2DEG's, this system shows a pronounced anisotropy that is depends on the doping level. The experimental results are complemented by theoretical calculations by Zhicheng Zhong and Karsten Held at the
Institute of Solid State Physics, and Xianfeng Hao and Cesare Franchini,
Computational Materials Physics, University of Vienna.
The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Link to original publication
TU press release ·
Der Standard · die Presse
2014-Nov-27
2014-Nov-12
2013-November-05
2013-October-21
2013-October-11
2013-September-3
Zbynek Novotny successfully defends his dissertation entitled 'The Reconstructed Fe3O4(001) Surface as an Adsorption Template'. Prof. Igor Shvets from Trinity College, Dublin, serves as the second examiner. After the successful defense, Zbynek throws a great party with lots of Czech beer. Well, done, Z!
2014-Sep-02
Anatase, a form of titanium dioxide (TiO2) is used in (photo)catalysis and many other applications. The interaction of oxygen molecules with this material is of central importance. How this happens on the atomic scale was investigated in experiments by Martin Setvin of the Surface Physics group and calculations by Annabella Selloni (Princeton University) and coworkers. It was found that O2 interacts with oxygen vacancies in the material, resulting in O2 (peroxo) molecules incorporated in the surface.
These results were published in the prestigious journal Science.
Abstract with link to full text
TU press release ⋅
Princeton press release ⋅
youtube video
Articles in the media: Chemical & Engineering News ⋅ der Standard (German) ⋅ ORF (German)
2013-Aug-1
2013-Jul-25
2013-Jul-04
Today, our group was honored by a visit of the Austrian Federal Minister for Science and Research, Prof. Dr. Karlheinz Töchterle. He visited our labs and discussed ongoing and planned research with group members.
TU press release
2013-Jul-1
2013-Jun-10
Metals such as gold or palladium are often used as catalysts to speed up certain chemical reactions. When the atoms ball together, most of them do not get into contact with the surrounding gas any more and the catalytic effect diminishes drastically. The mechanism of clustering is not well understood, however. In an article published in the prestigious journal Nature Materials, Gareth Parkinson and co-workers report on a detailed study of this issue; they have followed the fate of each surface atom and analyze how they are affected by different gas atmospheres. They find carbon monoxide to bind strongly to palladium atoms, helping them to move across the surface.
The article in Nature Materials (subscription required)
TU press release english ⋅ german ⋅ youtube video
2013-May-22
Prof. Zhiqiang Mao, Tulane University, visits the group and gives a joint
IAP/
FOXSI seminar entitled 'Novel Quantum Phenomena in Perovskite Ruthenates'
2013-May
Ulli, Martin and Margareta (a prospective new group member) attend the
Gordon Research Conference on “Chemical Reactions at Surfaces” in Diablerets, Switzerland for a week of great talks in a spectacular setting.
2013-Apr-9
Ulrike Diebold was awarded the 2013 Arthur W. Adamson Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Surface Chemistry from the
American Chemical Society (ACS) for “significantly advancing the fundamental understanding of the surface chemistry of metal oxides, in particular TiO
2, through excellent research, writing, and lecturing.” She received the award during the
245th National ACS Meeting in New Orleans, USA, April 7-11, 2013. At the meeting, a five-session symposium was held in her honor, with contributions from more than 40 scientists from the US, Europe, and Asia.
Adamson Award · TU press release (in German)
2013-Apr-17
2013-March
2013-March
2013-February-04
We welcome Jonas Gloss, Jan Hulva, and Petr Mares, physics students from
Brno University of Technology. They will be working with us for the next 6 months.
2013-Januar-29
![delicate work delicate work](/www/_media/surface/news/tsst2.jpg?w=100)
Ulrike, Zhiming, and Stefan attend a course at Twente University on 'Advanced Laser Deposition of Complex Oxides'. It included changing the filament in the RHEED gun and watching how SrRuO3 grows on SrTiO3.
2013-January-07
2012-November-29
Philipp Scheiber successfully defends his dissertation entitled 'Defects and Adsorption at Titanium Dioxide Surfaces'. Here is Philipp, with outside examiner, Prof. Vladimir Matolin from Charles University in Prague, enjoying a well-deserved drink.
2012-November-26
![](/www/_media/surface/news/gamba.jpg?w=80)
Oscar Gamba Vasquez, a PhD student from Colombia, and two Master's students from Austria, Daniel Halwidl and Benjamin Daniel, join the group.
2012-November-01
We extend a warm welcome to Dr. Stijn Mertens, who joins us from the
KU Leuven. He will spearhead our new efforts in electrochemical
STM.
2012-October-01
2012-October-02
Several group members attended the annual project meeting of our
SFB FOXSI at Burg Schlaining, where Zhiming Wang, Bernhard Stöger, and Stefan Gerhold presented their latest results.
Other members of our group went to Prague to attend a
COST Action meeting. Martin Setvin, Zbyněk Novotný, and Jiří Pavelec gave presentations.
2012-September-21
2012-September-10
Zhiming Wang, Martin Setvin, Jiri Pavelec, Zbynek Novotny, and Bernhard Stöger attend this year's ECOSS conference.
2012-August-27
Ulrike Diebold and Gareth Parkinson gave invited talks at the 224th American Chemical Society Meeting in Philadelphia (Aug. 20 - 24), and at the SPIE Conference in San Diego, respectively. Both spoke about our newest results on Fe3O4.
2012-August-15
2012-July-30
Our article “Pt
3Zr(0001): A substrate for growing well-ordered ultrathin zirconia films by oxidation”,
Phys. Rev. B 86, 035451 (2012), was selected Editor's Suggestion, indicating that the editors and referees find the article of particular interest, importance, or clarity.
2012-July-04
From 1 to 6 July 2012, more than 25 Nobel Laureates and more than 580 young researchers from all over the world met at Lindau, Germany, to exchange ideas, discuss projects and build international networks.
IAP graduate student Zbynek Novotny was selected to attend this meeting, which was dedicated to physics.
Click here for more information about the Lindau meetings
2012-June-26
Prof. Annabella Selloni of Princeton University vists our group during the week of June 25. She gives a joint
IAP/SFB FOXSI seminar and we discuss our joint research on anatase surfaces.
Selloni's homepage
June 2012
In the latest issue of Physical Review Letters [
Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 216103 (2012)], Zbyněk Novotný and colleagues describe the discovery of highly stable single gold atoms on a magnetite (Fe
3O
4) surface. This observation is expected to facilitate catalysis research: On the other substrates studied so far, gold atoms don't stay alone but easily form large clusters, which are considered less active catalysts than single atoms.
Press release of the TU Wien
APS Physics article
Chemical&Engineering News article
Articles in the media: ORF Science,
Wiener Zeitung,
der Standard,
Deutschlandradio,
phys.org,
nanowerk, …
Ulrike Diebold has received a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant for her project OxideSurfaces, which will be funded with up to 2.5M Euro, and will run over 5 years. The project focuses on metal oxides. These materials have an extremely wide range of physical and chemical properties, and are used in catalysis, solar cells, batteries, gas sensors, and many other technical areas. Research topics are the interaction between bulk and surface defects, complex oxides, and she will also aim at scanning probe microscopy of oxides with atomic resolution in an aqueous solution.
Press release of the TU Wien
Newspaper article in "Der Standard"
Newspaper article in "Die Presse"
Further online article
2012-Jan-13
Ulrike Diebold received an invitation to join the editorial board of
Physical Review Letters (PRL). She will act as an associate editor for the Material Physics Division from 2012 - 2014. PRL reports on the 'hottest and newest' in all of physics, from high-energy to solid state to astrophysics. It is the most highly-respected journal in physics, and serving on its board is a true honor.
2012-Jan-12
The Austrian Fund for (FWF) has approved a new doctoral program 'Building Solids for Function'
'SolidFun'. The program will be providing students with the opportunity to pursue interdisciplinary research. Groups from chemistry, physics, and electrical engineering departments at the TU are participating. The
Surface Physics Group at
IAP, headed by Ulrike Diebold, will also be part of this new doctoral program. The application process will start this Spring.
2011-Sep-30
2011-Sep-01
In an unusual location, the Opera House of Wrocław, Poland, Professor Ulrike Diebold gave a plenary talk at Europe's largest conference on surface science, ECOSS-28. The topic of Ulrike's talk was the Surface Science of Metal Oxides; she discussed recent progress, challenges, and opportunities in this area. The ECOSS-28 conference was attended by more than 650 participants, including
IAP members Michael Schmid, Zbyněk Novotný, Philipp Scheiber, Gareth Parkinson, Peter Jacobson, and Sameena Shah Zaman, who also gave presentations on their recent research.
2011-Mar-15
Today is the official start of the
Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) “Functional Oxide Surfaces and Interfaces”. Results of this four-million-Euro research program are expected to have an impact on applications in catalysis, gas sensing, fuel cells and microelectronics. The SFB unites researchers from the TU Wien and the Universities of Vienna, Innsbruck and Siegen (Germany). Three of the ten project leaders in the SFB are members of our institute, two of them in Surface Physics group!
Ulrike Diebold will work on pervoskites,
Michael Schmid will study ultrathin zirconia films, and Josef Redinger (
CMS group) leads the theory part and. See the
TU Wien press release (in German) and the
abstract of the SFB for more details.
2010-May-28
In the Cathedral of Lund, in a grand ceremony, Peter Varga was conferred an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Lund, Sweden. The degree was awarded for his outstanding contributions to materials science on the atomic scale.
2010-May-14
Newly appointed professor Ulrike Diebold has discovered that hydrogen bonding plays a key role in the diffusion of organic molecules across solid surfaces. By gaining and losing hydrogen atoms, catechol molecules rotate in a dance-like motion along the titanium rows of a TiO
2 surface. These results have been published in the prestigious journal
Science [
Li et al., Science 328, 882-884 (2010)]. The work was also featured in Chemical and Engineering News [
C&EN 88, 29 (2010)].
2010-Jan-04
Prof. Ulrike Diebold has moved from
Tulane University (New Orleans, LA, USA) to TU Wien and started her position as full professor of surface science at our institute. Welcome to the Surface Physics group!
2007-Dec-14
2007-Jul-16
By scanning tunneling microscopy Peter Varga und Michael Schmid and members of their
Surface Physics Group have revealed the atomic structure of oxides used in catalysts. See the
press release.
2006-Jul-28
The
Surface Physics Group celebrates its 25
th publication in
Physical Review Letters. Congratulations!
The 25
th PRL isn't about silver; although one might expect this for a silver jubilee; oxidation of silver happened to be the topic of the 24
th PRL of this group.