Heinrich Rohrer Grand Medal for Franz J. Gießibl

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Professor Dr. Franz J. Gießibl, Chair of Experimental and Applied Physics at the University of Regensburg, has been awarded the Heinrich Rohrer Grand Medal.

April 30, 2024

Professor Dr. Franz J. Gießibl, Chair of Experimental and Applied Physics at the University of Regensburg, has been awarded the Heinrich Rohrer Grand Medal. This internationally renowned prize, named after the Nobel laureate and developer of the scanning tunnelling microscope Heinrich Rohrer, has been awarded since 2013 for outstanding research achievements in the field of nanoscience. The Heinrich Rohrer Medal is awarded by the Japanese Society for Vacuum and Surface Science (JVSS) in cooperation with IBM Research - Zurich, the Swiss Embassy in Japan and Rose-Marie Rohrer.

Scanning tunneling microscopy - developed by Heinrich Rohrer and Gerd Binnig - and its derivative, atomic force microscopy, are among the most important tools in nanoscience. Tunneling microscopy made surfaces visible with atomic resolution and atomic force microscopy even enabled subatomic spatial resolution and made imaging of insulators possible. Franz J. Gießibl's qPlus sensor belongs in this context. This sensor is a self-scanning measuring needle, a so-called cantilever based on quartz, which can oscillate with atomic radius amplitudes in the vicinity of reactive surfaces and thus provides an enormously high spatial resolution. The tip of this special probe is attached to a quartz beam that oscillates at a specific frequency - comparable to the quartz crystal in high-precision watches.

To this day, the qPlus sensor is an indispensable component of the atomic force microscope. On December 30, 1999, Gießibl succeeded in obtaining the first detailed image of the internal structures of the electron shell of an atom. This discovery aroused the interest of the general public as well as scientific experts and inspired artists, in particular the renowned German painter Gerhard Richter.

Photo © Birgit Gießibl