Design and Manipulation of Functional Molecular Nanosystems at Interfaces
Abstract
The control and organization of molecular species at interfaces is the key to advanced molecular science, nanochemistry and the development of novel materials. The speaker and his research group explore the pertaining bonding, assembly and dynamic behavior at well-defined homogenous surfaces, textured templates and sp2-sheet layers. The developed bottom-up fabrication protocols employ biological and de novo synthesized building blocks, exploiting error-corrective bonding schemes as well as covalent chemistry. Their approach provides a rationale for the interfacial control of single molecular units and the design of nanoarchitectures with remarkable structural features, intricate dynamics and tailored properties.
About the speaker
After studying physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Prof. Johannes Barth received his doctorate in physical chemistry from the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin in 1992. He then became an IBM Postdoctoral Fellow at the IBM Almaden Research Center in the US. He spent over a decade continuing his work at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. After he researched and taught as the Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, he was appointed full professor at Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 2006. He is currently the Chair of Molecular Nanoscience and Chemical Physics of Interfaces at the TUM.
The research activities of Prof. Barth center on the fundamental understanding of phenomena at boundary surfaces and the design of functional molecular nanostructures. His work focuses on the control of complex molecules and highly-organized supramolecular architectures at the atomic scale. His research group investigates and manipulates individual nano-objects and highly organized supramolecular systems.
Among the awards Prof. Barth received are the European Research Council Advanced Grant (2009), Prix Latsis Universitaire from Fondation Latsis Internationale (2001) and the Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (1993).
