Shooting with atoms

TU Wien has awarded the Hannspeter Winter Prize to physicist Elisabeth Gruber for her research into the bombardment of surfaces with highly charged ions. The conditions created by Elisabeth Gruber in the laboratory are often so extreme that you would struggle to find them anywhere else in the entire universe. Her research looks into the impact of highly charged ions on different surfaces, which has allowed her to uncover the answers to questions that are crucial within a wide range of applications, such as microelectronics, material characterisation and even cancer research. And now she has been awarded the TU Wien Hannspeter Winter Award for her work on her PhD thesis, supervised by Prof. Friedrich Aumayr (Institute of Applied Physics, TU Wien). Ions and surfaces - Elisabeth Gruber conducted many different experiments while working on her thesis. The initial stage involved applying a great deal of energy to remove a large number of electrons from heavy particles, such as xenon atoms. This gives rise to highly charged ions with a positive charge of up to 44, which can then be accelerated, aimed at a particular material and shot at it.