Trinity College Dublin

In-house laboratory facilities consist of two large ultra-high vacuum systems: each system has a separate preparation chamber and fast entry load-lock facilities. Additional features include argon ion bombardment, Knudsen cell deposition and quartz crystal monitor, as well as mass spectrometry.

The first system has Omicron low energy electron diffraction (LEED) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) based on a VG CLAM II analyser. Additional features include a helium resonance lamp. The second system is a refurbished VG ESCALAB, donated by the Fritz-Haber-Institut. This system is used for survey measurements and is available to other researchers in the School.

In addition, collaboration with colleagues in DCU offers access to an Omicron variable-temperature scanning tunneling microscope (STM).

A number of synchrotron radiation (SR) techniques are available at different European centres: the surface sensitivity of PES is maximised by tuning the photon energy so that selected core emission is at minimum escape depth; moreover in this soft X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (SXPS), the high flux is traded for resolution that laboratory sources cannot provide; there are also specialist techniques like near-edge x-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) and x-ray standing wave (SXW); the concepts of LEED and PES are combined in the technique of photoelectron diffraction (PhD) which gives an atom-specific local structure probe.

With support from the EU Access to Research Infrastructures programme, measurements have been conducted at SRS (UK), BESSY (D), ELETTRA (I), ASTRID (DK) and MAXLAB (S).