GENERAL SEMINAR: Dr Ad Ettema, Scienta Omicron, Limburgerstrasse 75, 65232 Taunusstein, Germany
Thin film technologies are a vital method for modern production processes, from semiconductors to batteries and coatings of daily food products. In semiconductor and battery processes, thin film deposition methods have reached very high levels of sophistication and control. This high level of control can only be achieved with analytical methods that can determine the quality and physical properties of these thin films.
Scienta Omicron has developed systems to study the physical properties of thin films in situ in UHV. From depositing the thin films with MBE and analyzing with XPS, ARPES and STM without air exposure. High-profile analysis techniques such as HAXPES are also used in battery research and semiconductor thin films. With the high-energy x-rays buried layers can be studied whilst being kept at a different bias potential as the top surface, allowing the analysis of interfacial trapped states.
About ScientaOmicron Nobel Prize Technologies
1981
Kai Siegbahn (20 April 1918 – 20 July 2007) was awarded the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics, for developing the method of Electron Spectroscopy for chemical analysis, ESCA and XPS. Creating the starting point of Scienta in 1983.
Scienta Omicron has supported Nobel prize research ever since:
1986
Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer (at IBM Zürich) were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 for their design of the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM). Two years after the Nobel Prize award, Omicron started to offer the first scanning tunneling microscope. STM and later atomic force microscopy (AFM) have matured to a major cornerstone of modern nanoscale characterisation allowing to e.g. visualise individual atoms.
1986
Professor John C. Polanyi’s 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for developing research concepts in Gas-Phase Reaction Dynamics. Professor Polanyi has had a long career advancing research in many areas of Reaction Dynamics and is a champion of fundamental research. Scienta Omicron is proud that Professor Polanyi’s team at the University of Toronto use our products, including our Low Temperature Scanning Tunneling Microscope (LT STM) for their research.
2016
Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded to David Thouless, F. Duncan Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and phases of matter, verified on Scienta Omicron R4000 ARPES analysis system.
2019
Nobel Prize in Chemistry, rewarded Akira Yoshino, M. Stanley Whittingham and John Bannister Goodenough for the development of the lithium-ion battery, which is widely used in commercial devices. Energy storage, e.g. batteries, is a fundamental ingredient in the quest for fossil fuel-free energy technologies and research regarding this topic. Scienta Omicron HAXPES, APPES and APXPS technologies play a vital role in this research.