Surface science is a most invigorating field of study. New questions and new challenges are never in short supply, no matter what your specific interest is. From abstract mathematics to hands-on experimenting you are guaranteed to find a matching subject in this field. This shows very precisely how this field is intertwined with other branches of modern science. On the individual pages of different research projects you will find more on the motivation for studying the particular project, and on homepages of LSM members you may find see what attracted them to the field.
Surface science is the great crossroads of the highways of numerous disciplines.
It isn't really surprising that the techniques we employ are also very diverse. Our research apparatus ranges from a desktop terminal to multi million dollar synchrotron light sources of the size of a football stadium. Some experimentalists investigate their samples in air, some under high pressures of various gases, some under the best vacuum conditions man can achieve on Earth. Some work at the very chilly temperature of liquid Helium, some at the very hot temperature of the incandescent filament of a light bulb. UHV conditions are so important to most of our research, that there is a separate page devoted to the description of UHV techniques.