A diary of some remarkable events in the Surface Physics group.
2023-Nov-06
This fall the new funding period for the TU-D doctoral school is starting, and with it come the new students. First to join is Saeed Rasouli on the sub-project “Probing and manipulating atomic-scale defects on surfaces of 2D materials”, seen here trying to achieve this with noncontact atomic force microscope on a PtSe2 surface. Welcome!
Together with our colleagues from the University of Vienna, we had a booth at this year's European Researcher's Night in Vienna at the University of Applied Arts, representing TACO and SCI-PHI. From 3 PM to 11:59 PM, we did experiments, explained methods, answered questions, and entertained curious visitors with science!
Keep'em coming! Erik Rheinfrank has won the poster prize at the 24th International Conference on Non-Contact Atomic Force Microscopy (NCAFM2023) in Singapore. Apart from fame and honor, there is some prize money involved: 200 Singapore dollars (~140€) for Erik. Just in time for his birthday a few days later!
In a joint effort by the subgroups of TACO and Nano-CATalysis, the 2023 TACO conference was hosted in TUtheSky in the centre of Vienna. With a program full of top notch speakers, we had a great time over the rooftops of Vienna with plenty of discussions, coffee, and picturesque posters. Thanks to everybody who made this conference a big success, lots of fun, and a great scientific experience!
We are proud to announce that Igor Sokolović has won one of this year's three ÖPG dissertation prizes for his PhD thesis "Complex oxide surfaces studied at the atomic scale with AFM/STM and DFT". Hats off, Igor! With the prize come several rewards: an invitation for a talk (went well with a diverse audience) and an award ceremony
(Prof. Christian Teichert hands out the award as the president of the ÖPG) at this year's annual meeting held in Basel, Switzerland, a cash prize (spent with friends and colleagues on food and drinks), an award certificate (safe in a drawer), and an ÖPG-decorated mug: guess which one gets the most exposure!
David Kugler, who had been working in our group as Erasmus student some months ago, has returned to do his PhD with us. Together with Jan Balajka, he will be working on the structure of metal oxide surfaces and their reactivity to water. Welcome to the team, David!
Christian Flasch and Matthias Preidl did their masters theses at a company, where they applied surface science methods to improve technology for quantum computing. Their work was co- co-directed by Margareta Wagner, and both successfully defended their theses today. Congratulations!
We are happy to welcome our new colleague Faith Lewis. Having finished her Master's degree in Chicago, she came all the way across the great lake to join the SAC crew. Welcome to the team, Faith!
The German Vacuum Society has awarded Moritz the VACOM sustainability prize (Nachhaltigkeitspreis) for his PhD thesis on Alcohol Photocatalysis on Titania in UHV. As a research stimulus, it comes with 15.000€ earmarked prize money for equipment. The generous support is happily received. Nice!
At this year's KinderUni, Alex, Stefan, Moritz and another Moritz from Ellen Backus' group at Uni Wien gave a workshop on energy for the kids. Needless to say, scientific principles are most adequately explained by hands-on experiments. It was a morning full of Tesla coils, lightning discharges, making ice cream from liquid nitrogen, and burning gummi bears, also documented here, here and here.
With the weather being much nicer than predicted, we enjoyed ourselves at one of the barbecue spots at the Donauinsel.
After the group kebab and the group barbecue, what will the next exciting culinary excursion be…?
We are more than happy to announce that Margareta Wagner has been appointed to assistant professor in our group. Congratulations to your well-earned position, Margareta!
As it is tradition, we officially celebrated the warm spring weather with a hearty Kebap from the Naschmarkt.
For his outstanding achievements in the development and application of methods to elucidate the structure of the surfaces of metal alloys, surface oxides, bulk oxides and single atom catalysts using scanning probe microscopies and complementary DFT and quantitative LEED methods, the 2023 ICSOS Surface Structure Prize will be awarded to Michael Schmid at this year’s ICSOS conference in Badersee. Judging from the list of previous prize winners, Michael has been admitted to the Hall of Fame of Surface Science. Congratulations, Michael!
2023-Apr-14
Our treasured group member Lena Puntscher (née Haager) will temporarily leave our group as she is expecting a young daughter to see the light of day soon. We are looking forward to welcoming her back and saying hello to her firstborn child. All the best wishes to the Puntscher family!
2023-Mar-17
Some of us visit the famous Symposium on Surface Science (3S) conference which took place in Courmayeur, Italy. We learn much about on-surface synthesis and other latest news in our field, and enjoy outdoor discussions with colleagues. To top it off, Giada wins the Poster Prize that has been instigated in memory of Peter Varga. Congratulations, Giada!
2023-Mar-03
In order to foster Austria's future scientists, Ulli Diebold awarded the prizes to this year's winners of the Viennese Physicist Olympics (”Physikolympiade Landeswettbewerb Wien”). Congratulations to the winners!
2023-Feb-13
Moritz (see picture) is visibly happy about the good news that his MSCA proposal for a prestigious European postdoctoral fellowship has been accepted. Going by the catchy acronym SCI-PHI, the EU will provide generous funding for two years of research with Gareth on Single-atom Catalysis in Photocatalytic Investigations. Congratulations!
2023-Jan-13
Mica is a naturally occurring 2D mineral that has been around for ages in the scientific community. Its perfect cleavage planes have been exploited for numerous surface and interfacial studies. Despite the popularity of mica, some questions about the system still remain - for instance, what is the distribution of its surface K ions? In a recent paper in Nature Communications by Giada Franceschi et al., we show clear nc-AFM images of muscovite mica cleaved in UHV, which unveil the arrangement of its surface K ions. We rationalize the distribution with the help of DFT and Monte Carlo simulations. The work is part of our ERC project 'WatFun'. More details can be found at the TU press release, at idw-online.de, and at orf.at.
2022-Dec-02
The Austrian Science Fund FWF has officially accepted the proposal TU-D, co-authored by Ulrike and Gareth. The FWF will continue to fund an interdisciplinary doctoral school with 2 mio. € at the TU Wien, which focuses on so-called two-dimensional materials - compounds which consist of a single atomic layer and bear immense potential for various technical applications.
2022-Nov-09
Gareth Parkinson has officially been elected as Fellow of the American Vacuum Society (AVS) at the AVS conference in Pittsburgh. Only 0.5% of AVS platinum members “who have made sustained and outstanding technical contributions in areas of interest to AVS” receive this prestigious award. Hats off, Gareth!
2022-Nov-03
Our new PostDoc Hao Yin has joined Gareth's single-atom catalysis group. As a Marie Curie Fellow with his project Adv-SAEC, he's up to some serious single-atom electrochemistry. We're happy to have you on board, Hao!
2022-Oct-18
Sebastian Brandstetter has successfully defended his diploma thesis today.
Congratulations, Mr. Diplomingenieur!
2022-Oct-17
After the successful defense of his master's thesis, Andrea Conti has started his PhD thesis in our group.
Happy to have you back, Andrea!
2022-Oct-17
Margareta, Ulrike and Michael have won this year's Microscopy Today Innovation Award, together with Bernd Meyer and Martin Setvín. They invented the non-contact AFM technique ARPAS, which allows the atomically-resolved determination of proton affinity of surface atoms. Kudos to the winners!
2022-Sept-29
Andrea Conti has successfully defended his master's thesis at Universita' degli studio di Milano. He will join us soon for his Ph.D. Congratulations!
2022-Sep-28
Florian Kraushofer's PhD thesis was judged to be the best dissertation in physics produced in Austria during 2022 by the Austrian physical society (ÖPG). In recognition he received an invited talk at the ÖPG annual meeting, a fancy certificate, and a check for 1000 euros. Not bad!
2022-Sep-15
Serial prizewinner Lena Puntscher was at it again in Japan earlier this month, winning the prize for best student presentation at the IVC (International Vaccum Congress) annual meeting in Sapporo. Congratulations Lena, but to be honest we have come to expect nothing less!
Single-atom catalysis, or SAC for short, is one of the prime research areas in our surface physics group. Florian Kraushofer and Gareth Parkinson have now published a review article in Chemical Reviews that summarizes the current knowledge derived from well-characterized model systems.
Igor Sokolović wins the Prize for Best Oral Presentation, for his talk entitled “Two distinct two-dimensional electron gases appearing at truly bulk-terminated, cleaved SrTiO3(001)” at the ECOSS 35, the European Conference on Surface Science in Luxembourg. Congrats, Igor, well done!
The special properties of polar oxide surfaces have been fascinating us for a while. A recent paper in the journal Nature Communications describes the many configurations electrons can assume on the as-cleaved surface of KTaO3, which is an intrinsically polar material. . The paper is based on a collaboration with our friends from Uni Wien, within our SFB TACO.
We congratulate Lena, now with last name Puntscher, to her recent wedding. She immediately recognizes the special surface that the group created as our wedding gift.
After successfully growing high-quality LSMO(001), identifying an interesting surface structure, writing up the results in his thesis, and surviving being grilled by three physics professors, Michael receives his well-deserved degree. Erik, Michele, and Giada were always happy to help, and now they are happy to congratulate our new graduate.
Gareth Parkinson is elected to Fellowship in the AVS, the professional society for the Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces, and Processing. Amongst many of the most esteemed heroes in our field, his name appears now in this list. Congratulations, Gareth - well deserved!
Every good, in-depth discussion about surfaces should ideally start with a tasty lunch. Like this one, which lead to a lively exchange on SrTiO3 (or, short, STO) with our collaborators at Uni Wien in our TACO project.
2022-May-27
Giada Franceschi and Michele Riva tie the knot in a fabulous wedding close to Milan, Italy. We wish them all the happiness in the world!
2022-Mar-30
We very much enjoy the IAP's Spring Fest, and celebrate the 'Fritz' we receive for our group's movie entry. The following day, we spring-clean the lab. With everyone pitching in, all vacuum parts are now neatly organized.
2022-Mar-18
As described on our institute's news page, the 3S'22 was a big success. Several group members gave well-received scientific contributions. And we proudly present the winners of the gold and silver medals of this year's giant slalom race: Current PhD student David Rath and former PhD student Roland Bliem, respectively. (Group leader Ulli also received a medal, albeit in the not-quite-so competitive category of 'senior females'.)
2022-Feb-15
Moritz Eder, who visited our labs a while ago, has finished his studies at TUM. He joins Gareth's Single-Atom Catalysis task force as a post-doc, enhancing our group with valuable chemistry expertise.
2022-Feb
Achieving flat morphologies on oxides is a key ingredient for thin film growth and for high-quality surface science experiments. In a recent paper in JVST, Giada Franceschi, Michele Riva et al. summarize our experience with a variety of oxide materials. We find that the surface reconstructions, and switching between reducing and oxidizing conditions, play a major role. The paper is featured in an AIP Scilight.
2022-Feb
We warmly welcome international students supported by the Erasmus program. As seen in the photo, they started to work on their respective projects right away. (A) Andrea Conti, Università degli Studi di Milano; (B) Dominik Hrůza, VUT Brno; (C) David Kugler, VUT Brno; (D) Vojta Mikerásek, VUT Brno in the office and (inset) in the lab.
2022-Feb
Noisy data? Smoothing giving you artifacts? Doesn't work near the boundary of your data set? In a recent paper with this catchy title, Michael Schmid has analyzed common smoothing routines. Notably, he has created a new filter kernel based on a modified sync function (and appropriately named 'MS'). He provides the solution to your problems, as well as convenient plug-ins for all sorts computer codes.
2022-Jan-30
Florian Kraushofer has spent many productive years in our group and has become a friend to many of us. Now he is off to assume a post-doc position at TUM in Munich. We are sad to see him go but wish him the best in his new position.
2021-Nov-20
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A new post-doc, Chunlei Wang joins the group. With experience from his Ph.D. at UTSC in China and post-doc at KTH in Sweden, he brings valuable expertise in catalysis. And, as you can see from this photo, he also does not shy away from UHV work. Welcome, Chunlei!
2021-Nov-17
Congratulations to Lena Haager, who won the prize for best student presentation in the “Fundamental Discoveries in Heterogeneous Catalysis” focus session of AVS 67.
2021-Oct-01
.. coincides with our annual group hike. We sweat our way up to Hochwechsel. What a splendid location to welcome to our group Luca Lezuo, a new Ph.D. student.
2021-Sept-27
Our new SFB project 'TACO' finally holds its first in-person meeting at TU Wien on September 27-28, 2021. We hear about first results and future plans from TACO members, and get inspired by outside speakers Bjørk Hammer (Arhus U. Denmark), O. Anatole von Lilienfeld (University of Vienna), and Stefan Freunthaler (IST Austria).
See also this press release by TU Wien
2021-Sept-24
Florian Kraushofer defends his Ph.D. thesis entitled “Iron Oxide Surfaces as Support Materials for Single Atom Catalysis”. The picture shows Florina in the RT Lab, where he spent many happy hours taking data, together with his advisor, Gareth Parkinson. Congratulations!
2021-Sept-15
Igor Sokolović defends his Ph.D. thesis entitled “Complex oxide surfaces studied at the atomic scale with AFM/STM and DFT“. In the photo, you can see how happy he is, and how proud Maja is. Igor will continue working with Martin Setvin as a post-doc, supported by Martin's FWF project SUPER.
2021-Sept-15
Alex Imre, who did his Bachelor work with us some time ago, re-joined the group as a Ph.D. student. He will be working on our ViPErLEED project, supported by SFB TACO. Welcome back, Alex!
2021-July-23
Some of us attend the first real, life, in-person conference in a long time. It takes place in Prague and we learn a lot about clusters on and off surfaces. It is very nice to meet colleagues face-to-face. And, to top it all off, Lena Haager wins a Best Poster Prize!
2021-July-10
It has been exactly three weeks since all group members had a chance to receive their first vaccination shot. According to Austria's 3G rule, we can finally celebrate all our achievements from this past year. Our outdoor group meeting lasts well into the starry night.
In order to keep those voices out, we have been demanding a solid wall for a long time. Finally, it is being built!
2021-July-01
We welcome a new PhD student to the group: Johanna Hütner. Together with Jan Balajka, Johanna will work on our ERC project WatFun.
2021-May-06
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1780. According to its webpage, the Academy “honors excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor…”. Amongst its newest members, elected in 2021, is Ulrike Diebold.
2021-May-03
Stefan Uttenthaler joins as the Science Manager of our SFB TACO. Stefan uses his first lunch break to explore the culinary neighborhood of Freihaus and, indeed, finds the perfectly suitable take-out dish. Welcome to TU and to the surface physics group!
2021-April-28
The Brønsted acidity is a fundamental chemical quantity, well-understood and tabulated for molecules. The surface physics group has now devised a novel method to determine the acidity of solid surfaces, atom-by-atom. Margareta Wagner et al. used the functionalized tip of a non-contact AFM how probe individual hydroxyls on an In2O3 surface. In conjunction with DFT-based modelling by Bernd Meyer from the FAU Erlangen, proton affinities can be assigned to individual surface atoms on oxides. The paper appeared in the journal Nature and was featured in Physics Today.
Link to TU Wien Press release
Austrian Press Agency APA (in German)
die Presse (in German)
2021-April-27
Florian Kraushofer's recent paper about Rh atoms on Fe2O3 has been selected for the cover of the Advanced Materials Interfaces “Single-Atom Catalysis” special issue in which it will appear. The paper can be found here
2021-April-26
With lots of help by many group members:
(A) New SPECS Phoibos 150 arrives. (B) SPECS Phoibos 100 moves to q+. (C) Old SPECS Phoibos 150 moves to Omega. (D) New SPECS Phoibos 150 moves on TPD machine.
Bakeout will commence, and hopefully, we will have spectra from all chambers real soon.
2021-April-23
Paul Ryan has joined our group already last Fall. But now it is official: having received his PhD degree from Imperial College London, Paul can finally be employed as a post-doc by our university. He is working on our ERC project WatFun.
2021-March-23
In our long-standing collaboration with Cesare Franchini's group at the University of Vienna, we have often found that polarons contribute to the surface properties of metal oxides in profound ways. In a recent review article, we have taken an even broader view. The article was published this month in Nature Review Materials; a read-only version can be accessed here.
2021-February-26
… it could be spam. Or, it could be that you have been awarded the ÖPG Student Prize 2020. Which is what happened to Manuel Ulreich for his masters thesis entitled “Surface Science studies of Hydroformylation on a Model Single-Atom Catalyst”. Congratulations, Manuel, well-deserved!
Matthias Müllner successfully defends his PhD dissertation entitled “Oxides in Aqueous Solution: Stability and Acitivity at the Atomic Scale”. This topic is at the interface between electrochemistry and surface science, and in his research, Matthias addressed scientific aspects of solving the energy problem. Congratulations, Matthias, and much success for your future endeavours!
2021-Feb-10
This past June Zdenek Jakub received his PhD. After a few more months with us, he joined CEITEC in Brno as a post-doc. With his proposal entitled “Indirect Magnetic Interactions: Tuning by Electric Fields (IMAGINE)”, Zdenek has won a prestigious Marie Sklodowska Curie Individual Fellowship. In the photo you can see him in celebratory mood with his advisor at CEITEC, Jan Cechal. Congrats, Zdenek - we are very proud of you!
2021-Feb-01
Gareth Parksinson joined our institute in 2010. Since then, he has done real well: he has published great scientific results (some of them featured on this webpage), he has acquired an FWF Start and and ERC Consolidator grant, and he has established himself as an international leader in the emerging field of 'single atom catalysis'. On top, he has been a wonderful advisor, teacher, and colleague. We are extremely happy that his achievements have now been honored with promotion to 'University Professor'. Congrats, Gareth - well deserved!
2020-Jan-21
*Article: Science 371, 375-379 (2021) DOI: 10.1126/science.abe5757
2020-Jan-13
More details can be found here: job_ad_science_manager_sfb_taco.pdf.
Applications and inquiries should be directed to the coordinator, Ulrike Diebold, preferably before February 15, 2021.
The project is coordinated by Ulrike Diebold from our institute, and Gareth Parkinson, Michele Riva, and Michael Schmid are members of the consortium.
TU Press release (in German)
2020-Dec-15
At today's meeting of the Chemisch-Physikalische Gesellschaft (Chemical-Physical Society Vienna, CPG), a Learned Society founded 1869, Peter Lackner of the Surface Physics group will be awarded the Loschmidt Prize of the CPG for his PhD thesis Surface Science Studies on Zirconia Thin-Film Models Systems. With his PhD thesis, Peter has developed a model system to make the surfaces of ZrO2 accessible to surface science analysis methods and he could solve many open questions, e.g. why ZrO2-supported metal catalysts display the SMSI (strong metal-support interaction) effect. Congratulations!
2020-Dec-8
The Annual Physical Electronics Conference is the oldest meeting in surface science - it was held for the 80th time this year. As part of the conference, the top students in our field compete for the Nottingham prize. This year this was particularly tough – not only was the whole conference online, but already the selection of the runner-ups was highly selective. Giada Franceschi was amongst the four finalists, gave a fantastic talk on her PhD thesis results, and was shining in the Q&A session.
2020-Dec-8
The Ertl Lecture Award was established in 2008 by the three Berlin universities (Humboldt University, Technical University and Free University) and the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society to commemorate the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Gerhard Ertl in 2007. The prize includes a one-week research stay at the participating Berlin institutions and a festive evening lecture. This year the prize goes to Ulrike Diebold from our Institute.
The award ceremony and the lecture entitled “Oxide Surface Chemistry at the Atomic Scale” was streamed on Thursday, 10 December 2020.
A video can be viewed here.
Announcement by the Fritz-Haber-Institute
Press release TU Wien
Iridium oxide is an excellent catalyst for electrochemical reactions, and used for the production of hydrogen from water by electrolysis. Members of the IAP surface physics group and the Technical University of Munich have discovered that its surfaces – where catalysis happens – are quite different from what scientists have previously thought. The atoms in the near-surface layers rearrange, stabilizing otherwise unfavorable surface orientations. These structures have been found by machine learning and perfectly agree with experimental findings. The results are published in Physical Review Letters.
After a grand total of more than 26,400 coffees, our espresso machine is gracefully sent into retirement. It is replaced with the same model, just a bit more chic and sleek-looking. Our coffee experts calibrate it with the appropriate care and scientific accuracy, and the outcome is excellent: Note the crema!
Two new people in our group: Moritz Eder, a PhD student at TU Munich, visits us for several months to learn a bit of STM. Ali Rafsanjani-Abbasi comes to us from Mashhad, Iran, and starts his PhD work with Gareth. We welcome them warmly and, as you can see in the picture, immediately put them to work.
Giada Franceschi successfully defends her PhD dissertation entitled “Pulsed Laser Deposition of Functional Oxides with Atomic Scale Control”. Her thesis is brilliant, and she sparkled in her defense. Time for a celebration on top of TU Wien Freihaus. Congratulations!
On a glorious day with perfect weather for the outdoors, and under the competent leadership of our expert tour guide, Michael Schmid, we set out on our annual group hike. We conquer a respectable 1000 m in altitude, and we are rewarded with a great view and tasty Käsespätzle.
It has become a tradition to shoot a group photo at the 3rd floor of Freihaus, right across the Stephansdom, around July. This year we tried to honor not only this tradition but also social distancing rules. The figure shows how this involved: (A) Our professional photographer, David, moving his camera even further back than usual and (B) taking positions while staying safely away from each other. (C) Shows the - already edited - outcome after much running back and forth by David, who luckily shows considerable athletic in addition to artistic skills. The final photo, after some additional editing, can be admired by clicking on Group Members at the upper left of this page.
After more than eight, highly successful years in the surface physics group of our institute, Martin Setvin follows a call to Charles University in Prague, where he assumes a professorship. He will be the head of the Thin Films Group at Departement of Surface and Plasma Physics. For the next two years he will still conduct some research at our institute, however, supported by his FWF grant SUPER.
We extend our warmest congratulations!
2020-Jun-15
Lena Haager, freshly graduated from the Faculty of Chemistry of TU, joins us as a PhD student. A warm welcome!
2020-Jun-17
Zdenek Jakub defends his thesis in digital form. Luckily, the celebration afterwards takes place the old-fashioned way, with analog champagne. Congratulations, Zdenek, on a great dissertation and excellent defense!
For some molecules it is quite challenging to take images without altering them. O2, for example, dissociates into two atoms when hit with the electrons that are used in traditional imaging techniques that provide the necessary resolution. Using non-contact AFM with and a tip with one single oxygen atom at the very end, the surface physics group has managed to provide undisturbed images of O2 adsorbed on TiO2. This system has been investigated by many research groups throughout the years, and the new images have resolved several mysteries. The results were published in the journal PNAS.
TU Wien press release (in German) Eureka Alert (in English) ORF News
Original Publication: I. Sokolovic et al., Resolving the adsorption of molecular O2 on the rutile TiO2(110)-(1×1) surface by non-contact atomic force microscopy, Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences (2020)
2020-Jun-02
Next phase in opening the university. A tour through the labs shows more group members at work in the Freihaus, obeying social distancing rules.
2020-May-08
The university is slowly opening up again, and we can start our experiments. Margareta, who has now re-joined our group with her Richter project, is back in the lab.
2020-March-31
Ulrike Diebold is awarded an ERC Grant. In her project “Water at Oxides: A Fundamental Approach” or, in short,WatFun, she and her team will develop novel techniques to investigate 'wet' oxide surfaces at the atomic level. The project relies heavily on the surface physics' group capability of combining liquid water with UHV-based measurements, in particular with non-contact AFM. The planned reserach also builds on results from her previous ERC Advanced Grant 'OxideSurfaces'.
ERC 2019 Advanced Grant Results
TU press release (in German)
ORF der standard
As is tradition in our group, we celebrate happy news. What, exactly, we celebrate today is embargoed for the time being. Also, we are under lock-down because of coronavirus. Neither of these things stops us - cheers!
2020-March-06
Every two years, members of our institute organize the legendary Symposium on Surface Science 3S in St. Christoph am Arlberg, Austria. This year we are represented by a particularly large delegation. We discuss and present cutting edge science (including 2 lectures and 6 posters from the surface physics group) and we are having a great time skiing in the Austrian Alps.
2020-Jan-09
Gareth Parkinson receives a prestigious 'Consolidator Grant' from the European Research Council, ERC for his project entitled “E-SAC: Evolving Single-Atom Catalysis: Fundamental Insights for Rational Design”. He will utilise the tools of surface science to design and investigate systems, where the size of catalytically active nanoclusters is pushed to the ultimate limit: single atoms. Gareth has been working on this general theme for several years, funded by an FWF START prize that he received in 2015. In E-SAC, Gareth and his team will significantly expand the types of materials and reactions studied. They will devise experiments that connect ultrahigh vacuum surface science with 'realistic' conditions and environments.
Press release TU Wien (in German)
Since 1947, the City of Vienna has been awarding its Science Prize. The list of winners includes renowned scientists such as Lise Meitner, Erwin Schrödinger, and Viktor E. Frankl. This year the prize goes to Prof. Ulrike Diebold from our Institute of Applied Physics (Press release of the city of Vienna (in German)). During the award ceremony at Vienna's city hall, she was introduced with a short video (in Viennese German).
2019-November-15
For his outstanding habilitation thesis, Martin Setvin receives the 'Förderpreis des Kardinal Innitzer Studienfonds', which is awarded annually by the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Schönborn. Setvin is also a recent recipient of a prestigious GACR EXPRO grant, which supports excellence in fundamental research. His project “Ferroelectric Perovskites for Energy Conversion” was funded with 1.3 M Euros. He will use this money to build his research group when he assumes his professorship at Charles University in Prague.
2019-November-14
Ulrike Diebold receives an honorary doctorate from the Brno University of Technology (VUT), in a ceremony as part of the celebrations of the university's 120th anniversary. The ties between TU Wien and VUT have become even stronger!
2019-October
Jesus Ruben Lopez Redondo, a PhD student at the nanosurf lab in Prague, visits us for three months within the Erasmus+ program. He is working with Martin Setvin on the q+ machine.
2019-September-27
We go hiking. Under the expert guidance of Michael Schmid, we take the train and, after a little bit of uphill and downhill, enjoy a relaxed lunch before we conquer the Myra Falls in Lower Austria.
2019-September-25
Hao Chen, who spent the last year of his PhD studies with us, defends his thesis in Dalian. He will stay a few months in our group as a post-doc to wrap up his experiments on In2O3. Also, on his short trip back home to China he got married. Congratulations!
2019-September-18
Ulrike Diebold is elected to membership in the Academia Europaea
2019-Summer
This summer, three people got even more involved with the surface physics group: David Rath, who calculated the best configuration for an IRAS setup in his Masters thesis, is back to produce such a setup for real. Nico Resch starts his Masters thesis working with Gareth on single-atom-catalysis-related things. And Sebastian Brandstetter is excited to start a Masters thesis within an FFG-funded project joint with the Valtiner group and Berndorf Ges.m.b.H looking at stainless steel. (Well, not really: single crystals that have the composition of stainless steel, of course.)
2019-Apr-29
2019-Apr-26
2019-Apr-24
2019-Apr-15
The article: Reticcioli et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 016805 (2019) ⋅ arXiv:1807.05859
His funeral took place on Monday, November 5, 2018 in Maria Enzersdorf (Romantikerfriedhof, Grenzgasse 7). The Institute of Applied Physics mourns the loss of a long-time colleague and a good friend!
Peter Varga: Obituary, Nachruf, List of Publications.
The article in Science ⋅ Abstract with access to full text
Perspective Article by Jeong Young Park
TU Press release in English and German
Media coverage: Der Standard ⋅ ORF Science ⋅ Süddeutsche Zeitung ⋅ Die Welt ⋅ Die Zeit ⋅ Stern ⋅ New Scientist ⋅ phys.org ⋅ wissenschaft.de ⋅ chemie.de ⋅ Chemistry World, U.K. ⋅ ChemEurope ⋅ Live Science, U.S.A. ⋅ Index, Hungary ⋅ New Scientist, U.K. ⋅ Sciences Avenir, France⋅ BBC Mundo⋅ c&en news
The paper can be found here: “Water agglomerates on Fe3O4(001)”PNAS (2018)
and the usual brilliant write up from Florian Aigner here: TU Webpage article.
It was picked up by news media der Standard, apa
For more information, see the TU press release (English, German), the Youtube movie, article in Der Standard or the
Feature in Nature on high-performance microscopy
Congratulations to Jakob, Sebastian, and the PLD team!
Congratulations!
* Ionic crystals - materials that are composed of positively and negatively charged ions - can be put into a highly unfavorable situation. When split in half along certain crystallographic directions the electrostatic energy diverges. To alleviate this so-called polar catastrophe, materials can react in a variety of ways. In a recent paper, Martin Setvin and co-workers from the Surface Physics group and from the University of Vienna show the surface of a KTaO3(001) single crystal after cleaving, heating, and exposure to water vapor. Six different mechanisms to compensate polarity are encountered. One of the most pretty solutions, a nano-labyrinth with 4-5 atom-wide walls, is shown in the image on the right.
The article in Science ⋅ Abstract with access to full text
TU Press release in English and German
Media coverage: die Presse ⋅ APA ⋅ Welt der Physik
* During the opening ceremony of the ALC'17 conference in Kauai/Hawaii today Peter Varga received the Award of the 141st Committee on Microbeam Analysis of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Sciences (JSPS) for (quote) ”… his distinguished contribution on the clarification of surface phenomena by atomic level investigation and the development of novel functional materials.” Congratulations, Peter!
TU press release (in German) der standard Tiroler Tageszeitung
2017-March-28
Publication in PNAS
TU Press Release in English and German
Media Coverage: APA · Der Standard · ORF · MyScience · Chemie.de
2016-December-23
“Boron nitride nanomesh for actuated self-assembly”, and the WWTF will fund our work on “Modeling and Design of Epitaxially Strained Nanoislands” as part of the 'Mathematics and..' initiative. We are set for a Happy New Year 2017!
We wish the beautiful couple much happiness and continued success.
Original Publication
TU press release ·
Der Standard ·
Tiroler Tageszeitung
Salzburger Nachrichten
Aktuelles TU Wien
* Stefan Gerhold successfully defends his PhD thesis entitled “Surface Reactivity and Growth of Strontium Titanate (110)”. Afterwards he celebrates with examiner Prof. Wolf Widdra, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, and advisor Ulrike Diebold.
2016-May-4
2016-March
TU Webnews (in German)