Basic Surfaces and their Analysis

“God made solids, but surfaces were the work of the devil.” This statement by Nobel prize winner Wolfgang Paul emphasizes the diabolic nature of surfaces. Since surface properties deviate significantly from the bulk solid state, surface studies can be puzzling, misleading, and quite exciting! This book is an introduction to the basics of surface science including thermodynamics, surface structure, experimental probes, spectroscopy, microscopy, and ion-scattering. Surfaces are the external border of materials to the external worlds, thus by exploring surfaces one can investigate the material.

At a fundamental level, surfaces are of great interest as they can be considered as special defect of the bulk material. Introduction of the surface breaks an ideal periodicity in three dimensions leading to structural changes, and introduction of the new electronic and vibrational states. In the last few decades new and exciting surfaces properties have been explored in nanomaterials, low-dimensional structures in electronic and photonic devices, and other numerous applications.