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
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...
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...
The paper "Reliable identification of the complex or superlattice nature of intrinsic and extrinsic stacking faults in the L12 phase by high-resolution imaging" by Nicolas Karpstein, Malte Lenz, Andreas Bezold, Mingjian Wu, Stefan Neumeier, and Erdmann Spiecker has just published in the Journal Acta...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
