Poster Award for Daniel Schwarz

Daniel Schwarz, working as a Ph.D. candidate at the Physics of Interfaces and Nanomaterials (PIN) group has won a Poster Award at the Waldbreitbach summerschool entitled "Exciting excitations: From methods to understanding" which has been held in Waldbreitbach, Germany from July 25-29, 2011. The school, the third in a series, was funded by the Collaborative Research Center SFB 616 "Energy Dissipation at Surfaces" (www.sfb616.uni-due.de).

Nucleation and growth in action:

BDA on Cu(100) studied by LEEM

Daniel Schwarz, Raoul van Gastel, Harold J.W. Zandvliet and Bene Poelsema

Physics of Interfaces and Nanomaterial, MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Twente

Introduction:

The self assembly of organic molecules into large supramolecular structures is a promising

method for the fabrication of novel nanoscaled structures. Since the choice of organic molecules

with different functionality is practically infinite, potential applications of such

structures cover a wide range including: molecular electronics, biosensors, materials science

or host–guest chemistry. The resulting nanostructures are formed by the moleculesubstrate,

the molecule-molecule interaction and simple thermaldynamics. Usually molecules

interact through hydrogen bonds which are weak compared to the moleculesubstrate

interaction. Understanding the exact nucleation mechanisms of such systems is

crucial to effectively applying this form of supramolecular chemistry.