CD Laboratory for Surface and Interface Engineering

This CD Laboratory aims to significantly improve the understanding of interfacial reactions in the design of industrial processes and materials by experimental and theoretical means: This should enable the steel and semiconductor industries (and possibly other industrial sectors) to develop knowledge-based surface and interface technologies, for example to counteract harmful corrosion processes.

Interfaces and surfaces in this sense occur where structures of the same or different aggregate states meet: A simple example of a solid/liquid interface would be a Teflon pan, to which, as we know, nothing sticks. However, understanding the structure, interactions, mechanisms and kinetics at reactive interfaces also plays an important role, especially in the area of semiconductors with a wide band gap such as silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN), which are particularly promising for the high-tech industry: Extensive basic research is still required for a complete understanding of wet (such as etching) and dry (such as plasma etching) surface treatments. The aim is to understand surface conditioning at the atomic level in order to achieve high interface qualities in the manufacture of microelectronic circuits.

Steel surfaces and interfaces represent the second major application alongside SiC/GaN on which the CD Laboratory is focussing: Here, too, processes such as undesirable hydrogen evolution in the course of corrosion with catastrophic hydrogen embrittlement as a possible consequence depend on material interface structure and defects. The aim is to gain an atomistic understanding of different hydrogen development potentials and barriers in different zinc coatings in order to prevent such problematic cases.

Based on both of these applications, the laboratory team aims to take a significant step towards a general molecular understanding of complex reactive surface and interface processes by developing a synergistic set of experimental and theoretical tools. This progress will benefit a wide range of different sectors of industry, technology and the like - in addition to the steel and semiconductor industries, for example, also the field of biomedicine or renewable energy!