Functional Materials at Surfaces - Fabrication, Atomic-scale Characterization, and Advances Towards Application

The topic of functional materials at surfaces covers a wide range of material classes and length scales, from single surface-adsorbed organic molecules to extended 2D structures, and thus research areas. What these areas all have in common is the goal to understand the physics that ultimately defines the properties of these materials, and eventually to learn how to modify these properties in a controlled and reproducible manner to devise materials optimized for applications. One enormously powerful toolbox to achieve this is scanning probe microscopy (SPM). Over the past 40 years since its invention, SPM has evolved from a mere imaging technique to a tool that can provide information on structural, electronic, optical, and magnetic properties, and even facilitate the manipulation of individual adsorbates, all at the atomic level. These advances over the past decades have sparked tremendous progress not only in our understanding of the physics of such low-dimensional systems, but also in our ability to build structures with specifically tailored functionality. While the main focus of this seminar will be scanning probe based approaches, we want to also bridge the gap to alternative and complementary high-resolution characterization techniques.

This seminar, therefore, aims at providing an overview to some of the research areas within the rapidly growing fields of functional surface-adsorbed materials, covering recent progress in research on organic structures on surfaces, different deposition techniques, atomistic control of single molecules, as well as 2D materials beyond organic structures.

The conference language will be English. The Wilhelm and Else Heraeus-Foundation bears the cost of full-board accommodation for all participants.