Nanostructured Template Surfaces

The importance of nanoscience for the development of new technologies for the 21st century is internationally well recognised and huge efforts are underway worldwide in this area of research. Matter in nanometric dimensions (1 nanometer = 1 billionth of a meter) can display completely new physical and chemical properties as compared to their macroscopic bulk counterpart, and this will lead to new developments and applications in science and technology. The behaviour of nanostructures is determined to a large extent by their surfaces and interfaces to the macroscopic world, because a significant percentage of their atoms is located at these surfaces and interfaces. Surface science is therefore a fundamental discipline of nanoscience - the ultrahigh vacuum techniques of modern surface physics are indeed ideally suited for the characterisation of nanostructures. In this Joint Research Programme (JRP) metallic, non-metallic and oxidic nanostructures will be fabricated by physical vapour deposition followed by self-assembly on well defined single crystal surfaces and the constructs will be characterised at the atomic level. The self-assembly of atomic building units into nanostructures, the socalled bottom-up approach, is the most promising route towards the preparation of well-defined nanostructures - the physical origin and the chemical principles of the selforganisation of matter, however, are largely unknown. This JRP aims to contribute to the scientific knowledge base of nanostructure formation via the self-assembly approach. The leading groups of surface science of Austria at the Karl-Franzens-University Graz, at the Universities of Vienna, Linz, and Innsbruck, and at the Technical Universities of Vienna and Graz are joined together in this programme. In an interdisciplinary collaboration different methodologies of physics, chemistry, and materials science with a close cooperation between experimentalists and theoreticians will be focussed on to the preparation and characterisation of defined nanostructures on solid surfaces. The fundamental scientific results obtained in this JRP will promote the development in various areas of the emerging nanotechnologies, such as in the fields of novel electronic and magnetic devices, ultrahigh-density information storage, sensor design, heat and corrosion resistant coatings, and in heterogeneous catalysis.