Thin and ultrathin film technology is becoming increasingly important, as is reflected in the multitude of applications in nanotechnology, nanooptics, microelectronics, vacuum coating, catalysis, medical science, sensor elements, wear protection layers, and the synthesis of new materials. Usually, these high-tech films are grown in a vacuum environment via atom deposition. Ongoing progress in many areas requires the production of metal films or multilayer-films (multilayers) with increasingly special demands, e.g. flat on a nanometer scale. Nano-engineering demands detailed knowledge of the film growth process. However, comparatively little is understood of the atomic processes that govern the development of particular film structures as well as surface roughness. This lack of knowledge reflects the extreme experimental difficulties one faces when trying to obtain detailed atomic information during film growth or during a post deposition treatment.
We have developed a special UHV-STM that allows the real-time, in-situ observation of a surface simultaneously on the macroscopic as well as on the atomic scale during the deposition of tens of monolayers or the during ion erosion. In this way it is possible to study the underlying atomic processes and pathways that finally govern the film growth and, thereby, its particular properties.

Publications (click the link):
4) In-Situ Real-Time Observation of Thin Film Deposition: Roughening, Zeno Effect, Grain Boundary Crossing Barrier, and Steering
3) Smoking Barrels: a video-rate UHV-STM for real-time observation of deposition and ion-erosion
2) Towards a Faster Scanning Tunneling Microscope with Finite Element Analysis and Vibrometer Measurements
1) Improving the accuracy of walking piezo motors