Surface science is the study of physical and chemical phenomena that occur at the interface of two phases, including solid–liquid interfaces, solid–gas interfaces, solid–vacuum interfaces, and liquid–gas interfaces. It includes the fields of surface chemistry and surface physics. Some related practical applications are classed as surface engineering. The science encompasses concepts such as heterogeneous catalysis, semiconductor device fabrication, fuel cells, self-assembled monolayers, and adhesives. Surface science is closely related to interface and colloid science. Interfacial chemistry and physics are common subjects for both. The methods are different. In addition, interface and colloid science studies macroscopic phenomena that occur in heterogeneous systems due to peculiarities of interfaces.
Photoemission electron microscopy is a type of electron microscopy that utilizes local variations in electron emission to generate image contrast. The excitation is usually produced by ultraviolet light, synchrotron radiation or X-ray sources. PEEM measures the coefficient indirectly by collecting the emitted secondary electrons generated in the electron cascade that follows the creation of the primary core hole in the absorption process. PEEM is a surface sensitive technique because the emitted electrons originate from a shallow layer. In physics, this technique is referred to as PEEM, which goes together naturally with low-energy electron diffraction (LEED), and low-energy electron microscopy (LEEM). In biology, it is called photoelectron microscopy (PEM), which fits with photoelectron spectroscopy (PES), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).
Gabor A. Somorjai is a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and is a leading researcher in the field of surface chemistry and catalysis, especially the catalytic effects of metal surfaces on gas-phase reactions. For his contributions to the field, Somorjai won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 1998, the Linus Pauling Award in 2000, the National Medal of Science in 2002, the Priestley Medal in 2008, the 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Science and the NAS Award in Chemical Sciences in 2013. In April 2015, Somorjai was awarded the American Chemical Society's William H. Nichols Medal.
The Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry is a research institute of the Max Planck Society located in Martinsried, a suburb of Munich. The institute was founded in 1973 by the merger of three formerly independent institutes: the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, the Max Planck Institute of Protein and Leather Research, and the Max Planck Institute of Cell Chemistry.
The Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, also known as the Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer Institute, was a research institute of the Max Planck Society, located in Göttingen, Germany. On January 1, 2022, the institute merged with the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine in Göttingen to form the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences.
The Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research was founded in 1969 and is one of the 82 Max Planck Institutes of the Max Planck Society. It is located on a campus in Stuttgart, together with the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.
Gerhard Ertl is a German physicist and a Professor emeritus at the Department of Physical Chemistry, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin, Germany. Ertl's research laid the foundation of modern surface chemistry, which has helped explain how fuel cells produce energy without pollution, how catalytic converters clean up car exhausts and even why iron rusts, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
The Berlin Graduate School of Natural Sciences and Engineering (BIG-NSE) is part of the Cluster of Excellence "Unifying Concepts in Catalysis" (UniCat) founded in November 2007 by the Technical University of Berlin and five further institutions in the Berlin area within the framework of the German government‘s Excellence Initiative.
The Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons (ER-C) is an institute located on the campus of Forschungszentrum Jülich belonging to the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres. It comprises three divisions: ER-C-1 “Physics of Nanoscale systems”, ER-C-2 “Materials Science and Technology” and ER-C-3 “Structural Biology”.
The strength of metal oxide adhesion effectively determines the wetting of the metal-oxide interface. The strength of this adhesion is important, for instance, in production of light bulbs and fiber-matrix composites that depend on the optimization of wetting to create metal-ceramic interfaces. The strength of adhesion also determines the extent of dispersion on catalytically active metal. Metal oxide adhesion is important for applications such as complementary metal oxide semiconductor devices. These devices make possible the high packing densities of modern integrated circuits.
Elmar Zeitler was a German physicist.
Beatriz Roldán Cuenya is a Spanish physicist working in surface science and catalysis. Since 2017 she has been director of the Department of Interface Science at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, Germany.
Maki Kawai is a Japanese chemist who developed spatially selective single-molecule spectroscopy. In 2018, she became the first woman to become president of the Chemical Society of Japan.
FHI-aims is a software package for computational molecular and materials science written in Fortran. It uses density functional theory and many-body perturbation theory to simulate chemical and physical properties of atoms, molecules, nanostructures, solids, and surfaces. Originally developed at the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin, the ongoing development of the FHI-aims source code is now driven by a worldwide community of collaborating research institutions.
Robert Schlögl is a German chemist known for research in catalysis. Currently, he is the Director and Scientific Member of the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion in Mülheim an der Ruhr. He became president of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2023.
Karsten Reuter is a German physicist and chemist.
Ángel Rubio is a Spanish theoretical physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg. Rubio is also a Distinguished Research Scientist in computational quantum physics at the Simons Foundation's Flatiron Institute in New York City. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Physical Society.
Matthias Scheffler is a German theoretical physicist whose research focuses on condensed matter theory, materials science, and artificial intelligence. He is particularly known for his contributions to density-functional theory and many-electron quantum mechanics and for his development of multiscale approaches. In the latter, he combines electronic-structure theory with thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, and also employs numerical methods from engineering. As summarized by his appeal "Get Real!" he introduced environmental factors into ab initio calculations. In recent years, he has increasingly focused on data-centric scientific concepts and methods and on the goal that materials-science data must become "Findable and Artificial Intelligence Ready".
The Wilhelm Ostwald Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Leipzig, located at Linnéstraße 2 in Leipzig, is the oldest physical chemistry institute in Germany. It is one of seven institutes of the Faculty of Chemistry and Mineralogy of the University of Leipzig. The institute was ceremoniously inaugurated in 1898 by its first director, Nobel Prize winner Wilhelm Ostwald, and has borne the official name "Wilhelm Ostwald Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry" since 1998.
Karl Martin Wolf is a German experimental physicist specializing in electron and optical spectroscopy and their use for studying the dynamical processes in solid state materials, surfaces, and interfaces. He is the current director of the Department of Physical Chemistry at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, Germany.
