Access to Materials Research Equipment - Cardiff XPS

Many physical phenomena involve reactions involving interfaces: between solids and solids (adhesion, coatings), solids and gases (corrosion, heterogeneous catalysis) and solids and liquids (homogeneous catalysis, corrosion), and as a consequence detailed analysis of solid surfaces is often crucial. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is the most powerful single surface spectroscopy, out of the many which have been developed during the past four decades, and is capable of providing elemental and chemical information about solid surfaces. Unfortunately the instrumentation for XPS is very expensive / a typical state-of-the-art (but basic) system costing over 500K / and is beyond the resources of many research groups. It will thus be of immense benefit to many researchers to have access to such state-of-the-art facilities, which will enhance enormously their research capabilities. This application seeks funding to set up an XPS service for UK academic researchers and to provide not only access to the state-of-the-art equipment, but also to high quality support in data analysis and interpretation, which is as important as obtaining the original, high quality raw data. In addition, ancillary surface analytical techniques available on the Cardiff spectrometer will potentially enhance the information users can obtain from their use of the facility.