In the last week of August, many surface scientists from around the world attended the European Conference on Surface Science in the Portuguese city Braga.
Ilias Gaffarov, PhD student in the XUV group, gave an oral presentation titled ‘Chemisorption of H radical generated volatile Si hydrides on Ru films’. This work highlighted some of our most recent insights in the surface chemistry of hydrogen-induced outgassing contamination by volatile silicon species.
Marko Sturm presented an overview of the PhD research of Adele Valpreda, who defended her PhD thesis earlier this year. This presentation, titled ‘Resolving interfaces of W/Si layered systems with Low Energy Ion Scattering’ highlighted how the interface width in Si-on-W and W-on-Si layered systems can be quantitatively determined by analysing the so-called LEIS tails that result from sub-surface scattering of He ions.
The 39th edition of the ECOSS will be held in August 2026 in Norway.





