Surface Physics

Head: Gareth Parkinson

The Surface Physics Group focuses mainly on oxide surfaces and oxidation of metal surfaces. After all, almost every metal is oxidized under ambient conditions, and the range of physical and chemical properties of oxides is overwhelming. Some of the best superconductors and some of the best insulators are oxides; some oxides are highly active catalysts whereas others are inert and used to protect metals against corrosion. For understanding (and, eventually improving) many of these properties, you have to know what's going on at the surface!

Find out more details about a few of our topics:

• The Many Faces of Titania
• The Finer Details of Rust
• Post-transition metal oxides: transparent, conducting...
• Zirconia – In Your Mouth and Your Car?
• The Complex World of Aluminum Oxides
• Oxidation of Catalytically Active Surfaces
• Ultrathin metal films (it's not all oxides…)

You can find some older results (mainly on metals) in our STM Gallery.

Select publications by year from the sidebar (left) or the abstract search (including a few publications of Ulrike Diebold before she moved to Vienna). For your bibliographic database, almost all of our publications are listed in a RIS file or BibTeX file (last updated 2022-01).

• Thesis Opportunities
• Courses related to surface physics:
  • 134.165 VO Oberflächenphysik (Ulrike Diebold)
  • 134.326 VO Experimentelle Methoden der Oberflächenphysik (Michael Schmid)

Mainly for search engines: a list of all publications