ALOISA Research

ALOISA and its Users: Since 2001 to 2011, about 210 experiments have been performed at ALOISA during public beamtime, out of about 400 proposals submitted to the Elettra Review Panel. 40% of the experiments were performed by foreign groups, in particular from USA (25%), France (20%), Spain (15%) and Germany (12%) . Because of the large variety of experimental techniques available at ALOISA, first time Users are strongly encouraged to take contact with the scientists of the staff before submitting a proposal in order to properly focus the experimental plan.

Research fields Research takes place in fields related to the physics and chemistry of surfaces, materials science, and nanoscience. The philosophy behind the ALOISA project is to exploit in situ several complementary techniques (such as x-ray photoemission and diffraction) in order of achieving both the chemical and the structural characterization of the near surface atomic/molecular layers. In addition, the unparalleled flexibility of its scattering and detection geometry makes ALOISA ideally suited to the spectroscopic investigation (both x-ray photoemission, XPS, and absorption, XAS) of low symmetry systems, such as organic molecules on surfaces. Since 2001 to 2011, the physical systems mostly requested by our Users' community gradually shifted from hard matter (metals and semiconductors) to soft matter (small organic molecules), that is the dominant playground since 2006-07.

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In-house Research @ ALOISA

On one side, the ALOISA staff is committed to the development of innovative experimental techniques/methods such as Resonant Photoelectron Diffraction, Resonant Core-Hole Clock spectroscopy. On the other side, the ALOISA researchers pursue a broad range of research lines in surface and nano-science. Specific topics are the functionalization of metal surfaces by self-assembled monolayers of organic molecules (spanning from aminoacids to thiol derivatives), the charge transfer at hybrid junctions, the oriented growth of poly-and etero-aromatic molecules (e.g.: pentacene, perylenes, phthalocyanines, porphyrins) on metals and semiconductors, including the formation of complex etero-organic architectures. Several systems or chemo-physical issues are studied in tight collaboration with the ALOISA Users, also beyond the performance of Synchrotron experiments. In collaboration with the Department of Physics, the Doctorate School in Physics and Doctorate School in Nanotechnology of the University of Trieste, Laurea, Master and PhD students have the opportunity to perform their thesis within the ALOISA group, also taking advantage of the off-line capabilities of the branchline endstation, HASPES.