Methods

The hearts of our UHV chambers are home-built scanning tunneling microscopes (STM). The special design of the STMs is particularly focused on scanning at variable temperatures. The ability to image surfaces at a wide temperature range is important to gain information on kinetics and activation barriers of atomic processes.

In our High-Pressure STM setup surfaces can be examined in their catalytically active state at elevated pressures. With this approach we are able to bridge the pressure gap between classical surface science and industrial conditions of catalytic reactions.

For the study of surface dynamic processes high scan rates must be achieved. This has been implemented in our High-Speed STM setup, which allows for insights into atomic processes on a time-scale sufficient for the observation of motion of single atoms.

STM is accompanied by other surface sensitive methods to gain further information on surface structure and composition. With X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) we examine the chemical state of surface species. Low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) gives information on ordered surface structures.