Question: what new structures have you found before?

Philip Moriarty answered on 10 Mar 2015:

Our work is very much focussed on physics and chemistry happening at surfaces. Pauli, a very important 20th century physicist, famously said that “God made the bulk; surfaces were invented by the devil”. This is because the science of surfaces is exceptionally rich, complicated…and fascinating.

If you break open a crystal you expose a surface. The surface atoms are in a much less stable state than when they were in the bulk — they have free bonds (surface scientists call them dangling bonds) and they form a variety of remarkable structures to reduce the surface energy. This rearrangement of the atoms is called surface reconstruction and it gives rise to a remarkable variety of complex, striking, and often beautiful patterns. (Search for “surface reconstruction STM” in Google Images for some examples).

We’ve discovered a number of new surface reconstructions. This is one of the best bits of the job — when you see a new structure that no-one else has ever seen before. (Then of course comes the fun of working out just what it is…)