1 August 2016 - 31 August 2016

My stay at Aarhus University was full of excitements, finally meeting the scientists around Jeppe Vang Lauritsen and himself at the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNano). Previously, all of them were best known to me for their work and impact on the growth and characterization of transition metal dichalgonides (TMDC) on the Au(111) single crystal surface.

But by now this workgroup is also known to me for their warm and heartily welcome and their obliging hospitality.

One of the current PhD projects at iNano has a research focus on interactions of organic sulphuric molecules with TMDC nano clusters on Au (111). These common interests provided a fertile ground for this rewarding and productive stay. The main goal was to study the absorption of molecules, e.g., thiophene, dibenzothiophene and 4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene. From their great expertise and experience in fine-tuning both size and defect density of these nano clusters, which is actually quite complicated but made look so easy, I gained a lot of knowledge on the system and specific information on their procedures. These deeper insights into the related TMDC/Au(111) system will have a long-lasting influence on my future experiments within my PhD project at the University of Bremen.

Besides these fruitful experiments, beamtime was acquired for angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measurements at the SGM 3 beamline of the local synchrotron radiation facility ASTRID. I was able to join Charlotte Sanders of Philip Hofmann's Group at the INSTITUT FOR FYSIK OG ASTRONOMI for experiments on TaS2 clusters on bilayer graphene/SiC, thereby gaining a more profound hands-on understanding of the technique and its physical relevance, which could only be taught through personal experience and sophisticated coworkers.