News

A diary of some remarkable events in the Surface Physics group…

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 TiO₂, 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-March

• Lots of traveling this month: Bernhard, Stefan, Jake, and Zbynek present their research results at the German Physics Society's Spring Meeting in Regensburg. Many of us attend the PhD-Seminar of the Special Research Programme FOXSI at Hochkar, and receive valuable instructions in science and skiing. Some stay home and deal with a scheduled power outage.

2013-March

• Roland Bliem joins the group. He will be working with Gareth and Oscar on the Fe₃O₄ project.

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

• 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

• Ilaria Valenti from the University of Modena visits our group. Her extended stay is supported by the COST Action on 'Reducible Metal Oxides'

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

• 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

• At the institute outing in Carnuntum.

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.

• The rest of us stayed home and worked in the lab.

2012-September-21

• Our group visited the Annual Meeting of the Austrian Physics Society at Graz. Talks were given by Bernhard Stöger, Jake (Joong-Il) Choi and Zbyněk Novotný. Stefan Gerhold and Jiří Pavelec presented posters.

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

• Gareth and Zbynek spent one week in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Together with Juan de la Figurea, they did SP-LEEM experiments on Fe3O4.

2012-July-30

• Our article “Pt₃Zr(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.

• Gareth Parkinson has been awarded nearly 200k by the FWF to investigate the surface chemistry of Fe3O4 surfaces.

2012-July-10

• Iris Dorner, who is doing her Bachelor thesis in our group, wins our Euro-cup bet hands down with 33 points. She receives the jackpot and treats us all for beer!

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

• Jonas Gloss and Jan Hulva, physics students from Brno, are joining our group for the summer months. They are helping Jiri setting up a new chamber. Here is a picture:

2012-May-07

• The Austrian Academey of Sciences elected Ulrike Diebold as a 'corresponding member' in the class of natural sciences, exact sciences, and medicine.

Press release of the ÖAW
Press release of the TU Wien

Ulli is being warmly welcomed into the ranks of the ÖAW:

• 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 (Fe₃O₄) 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

• With his retirement as professor at the TU Wien, Peter Varga took a new position at the Brno University of Technology, and at the Central European Institute of Technology, CZ . Although he had a farewell party at the TU, he will continue giving courses here. He also continues to be a member of the Surface Physics Group.

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 TiO₂ 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

• Michael Schmid is appointed member of the Junge Kurie ('Young Acedemy') of the Austrian Acedemy of Sciences.

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.