Giada Franceschi , graduated 2020

Two-dimensional oxide heterostructures (Supervisor: U. Diebold)

Short bio: Giada Franceschi Giada earned her BSc and MSc in Engineering Physics from Politecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy) in 2014 and 2016, respectively. She performed her Master thesis work at the TU Wien, under the supervision of Prof. Ulrike Diebold.

Summary of the PhD project: In my PhD project, we will grow and characterize a variety of complex metal oxides, by combining pulsed laser deposition with in situ surface science analyses (STM, LEED, XPS, LEIS). Specifically, we will focus on energy materials that can be used in, e.g., solid oxide fuel cells.

Thoughts on TU-D: Unravelling the surface structure of newly-investigated materials at the atomic scale is an arduous task, which can only be accomplished by juxtaposing experimental data with theoretical results. The connection with theory that TU-D provides will be highly valuable for my project.