Home

Welcome to our home page

Our team is working on advanced microscopic and spectroscopic methods for the analysis of micro- and nanostructural properties of materials at the dimensions bridging macro down to atomic scale. The goal of our work is to facilitate a quantitative understanding of the relationship between fabrication (engineering), structure, and properties of materials. Our research topics span over functional materials, nano-structures, interfaces, and thin film systems.

Institute updates

Category: Activities, Allgemein, News

The "Olympics" microscopy, the 20th International Microscopy Congress (IMC20), took place last 10-15.September in Busan, South Korea, after being postponed by a year due to the pandemic. Over 3,000 people attended the grand event. We have met long-lost colleagues and friends during this congress and...

Category: Allgemein, News

This month’s image shows the crystal structure of a cobalt-base superalloy at atomic resolution (image width: 12 nm) recorded using scanning transmission electron microscopy. Superalloys of this type are produced to withstand extreme environments with temperatures above 1000 °C. In the image, you ca...

Category: Allgemein, News

This light microscope image shows few layers of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), a layered crystal held together by van der Waals forces, on a thin gold film. These very thin MoS2 flakes were made by cleaving the natural layered bulk crystal, with the gold film serving as a stabilizer. The color of the ...

Category: Allgemein, News

This month’s image shows a comet-like particle gracefully navigating the (nano)cosmos. The particle is the result of an annealing experiment with a gold/nickel thin film on a zinc oxide substrate. An unexpected reaction of nickel with zinc oxide produced a tail trailing a gold particle. The image w...

Category: Allgemein, News

Hopefully your spring cleaning is already done! Here you can see the world’s smallest broom in action. This SEM image shows a small metal tip used for cleaning surfaces on the nanoscale - in this case graphene, the thinnest material in existence (a single atomic layer of carbon). Graphene is cleane...

Category: Activities, Allgemein, News

After the complete opening since the COVID, the annual IMN/CENEM retreat took place again in Kleedorf during 9-12. May. A total number of 32 members attended the workshop. This year, we arranged a poster session besides the oral presentations, allowing master and bachelor students to present and dis...