There is a plenty of room at the bottom

This month’s issue features an article by Dr. Pavel Jelínek, head of Department of Thin Films and Nanostructures, Institute of Physics of the ASCR. The unifying objective of this department is nano-characterization used to find the correlation of structural, chemical and physical properties of nanostructures, thin films and interfaces.
The Nanosurf Lab studies fundamental phenomena in surface physics at the atomic length scale. Analysis, control and modification of molecules, surfaces or nanostructures are the great challenges in recent years. It interfaces semiconductor surfaces and metal-semiconductor or organic-semiconductor interfaces on the atomic and the nanoscopic scale. Reconstruction, relaxation and dynamics on a monocrystalline surface after a deposition of metal atoms are monitored as a function of temperature and coverage. The lab combines these methods: the nanoprobe technique (UHV LT & VT STM/AFM); photoelectron spectroscopy (the source of synchrotron radiation, Elettra, Trieste, Italy); electron diffraction methods (LEED, SPA-LEED); advanced theoretical analysis based on DFT simulation; statistical mechanics (kinetic Monte Carlo MD rate equations model). The combination of these techniques allows a state-of-art complex analysis of studied processes and systems.