Research Overview

Many systems from all fields of science possess a common and most fascinating property: They may form patterns in space and/or time from originally uniform states when kept far from thermodynamic equilibrium. The basic principles governing the formation of spatio-temporal structures and their dynamics are universal, i.e. they are independent of the nature of the specific system.

We study the spontaneous formation of adsorbate and/or reactivity patterns at electrode surfaces, both experimentally and theoretically with the aim:

• to contribute to an understanding of the fundamental mechanisms governing pattern formation in non-equilibrium systems
• to unravel the origin of instabilities in electrochemical systems
• to shed light on dynamic instabilities in systems of practical relevance and to exploit them in technological applications (such as metal or semiconductor corrosion, in fuel cells or in electrocatalysis).

Experimental techniques include:

• scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM)
• ellipsometric microscopy for surface imaging (EMSI)
• spatially resolved FTIR spectroscopy (SEIRAS)
• potential micro-probes.

Theoretically, we develop models describing the spatio-temporal behavior, investigate their solutions using state of the art bifurcation analysis and relate the models to prototype equations in nonlinear dynamics, such as reaction-diffusion equations of the activator-inhibitor type, or the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation.

See Research Projects page for current research topics.