Preface: Phys. Status Solidi A 206/3
Authors: Doll Theodor , Wagner Patrick , Schöning Michael J. 
Published: March 2009

Dear colleagues,

on the following pages, you will find a series of 17 articles emerging from the first edition of the workshop on ‘Engineering of Functional Interfaces’. This workshop – briefly addressed as ‘EnFI’ – was held on June 12–13, 2008, for the very first time at the Solar Campus Jülich of the Aachen University of Applied Sciences. EnFI, under the auspices of the VDE/VDI Society of Microelectronics, Micro and Precision Engineering (GMM), aims especially at younger scientists, postdoctoral researchers, and doctoral students and its format strongly resembles international ‘master classes of music’. EnFI offers tutorial lectures by experienced scientists, generally with a broad interdisciplinary background, and provides, equally well, a podium for presenting the own research of each participant to an international and interdisciplinary community. The contributions by the participants were actually twofold (an oral ‘appetizer’, followed by lively poster discussions) and the scientific level truly exceeded even optimistic expectations.

Concerning the scientific contents, Feynman's legendary one‐liner ‘there is plenty of room at the bottom’ can nicely be transferred to ‘there is plenty of room at interfaces’ and especially at smartly designed interfaces with functional properties. Fascinating, interface‐driven phenomena, like giant‐negative magnetoresistance have recently been honoured with the Nobel prize in Physics 2007 for Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg, or the Nobel prize in Chemistry 2007 for Gerhard Ertl's unravelling of the molecular mechanisms behind heterogeneous catalysis. The design and understanding of phenomena at functional interfaces is a joint endeavour for various scientific and technological disciplines while the application potential is tremendously huge. These transdisciplinary aspects were nicely illustrated by the 4 tutorials and 28 contributed lectures of EnFI 08, covering the topics of (i) organic/inorganic interfaces, (ii) materials systems for sensors and actuators, (iii) theoretical modelling of surface properties, and (iv) applied aspects of sensorics and biofunctional surfaces.

Finally, we would like to thank the editorial staff of physica status solidi cordially for their kind support in publishing the conference proceedings: physica status solidi has offered us a solid platform for publishing forefront research – all made by young people – with a double peer‐review system at best international standards. Special acknowledgements go to Julia Hübner, Stefan Hildebrandt, and Martin Stutzmann for their helpful support in the entire editorial process, to all people behind the scenes taking care of literally ‘the dots in the i's’, and, not to forget, to the referees for their invaluable advice and clear judgements.

To finish, we would like to invite you for the 2nd edition of the EnFI workshop: ‘EnFI‐2009’ will be organized on June 18–19, 2009 in Belgium at Hasselt University. Hasselt, known as ‘Belgium's capital of good taste’, is centrally located in the Maas–Rhine triangle at an equal distance from Aachen, Brussels, and Eindhoven. Again, physica status solidi will host the conference proceedings and, after the highly positive experiences with the previous EnFI edition, we are looking forward to an excellent and fruitful conference.

Engineering of Functional Interfaces – EnFI‐2009

June 18–19, 2009

Hasselt University, Campus Diepenbeek

Agoralaan, 3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium

www.EnFI‐2009.eu

Jülich, 4 February 2009