The Surface Science Laboratory
The Laboratory of Surface Science (...where I finished my PhD thesis) is one of the Chemical Engineering Department (University of Patras) laboratories. Professor S.Ladas is the Head of the team working here, assisted by Professor S. Kennou, some PhD students and me...
Surface Science, as a research area, is found at the borderlines between Solid State Physics and Material Science and is developed substantially during the last thirty years. The progress achieved in Ultra High Vaccum Technology, during these years contributed considerably on the developpement of Surface Science, as a result of the Space Research during the decades '50 and '60 .
In a typical Surface Science Laboratory (like ours) one can find a UHV (Ultra High Vacuum) chamber, inside which we place the specimens to be examined at a pressure range very close to the absolute vaccum. Several techniques surround the chamber like XPS (X-ray Photoelectron Specrtoscopy), UPS (Ultra-Violet Photoelectron Spectroscopy), LEED (Low Energy Electron Diffraction) etc. There is also a complete pumping system which includes mechanical pumps, turbomolecular pumps etc. Finally there are lots of pressure, current, high voltage and so on, controllers and peripherals (assisted by computers) which are responsible for achieving the necessary conditions of each experiment.
In a Laboratory like this, we study the physical and chemical prperties of the surfaces of several solid materials, in atomic level. By our experiments we try to find out:
- What kind of atoms are there on a specific surface plane.
- How many atoms of each kind are there on a specific surface plane.
- Which is the geometrical order of these atoms.
The final question posed is about the affection of all the above characteristics on the several physical or chemical phenomena that take place on solid surfaces.
Some examples of industrial technologies related with the surface phenomena are microelectronics, surface epilayer techniques, heterogeneous catalysis, production of synthetic materials etc.
At last, I have to mention that our Laboratory is unique in Greece because of the special (and expensive of course...) techniques that we use in our experiments, since our financial sources come from a lot of european and greek Research Programs and Institutes...
Following this link: S.S.L you can visit the web page of our Lab...
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