His main expertise regards surface and interface science, photoelectron spectroscopies, X-ray absorption, photoelectron spectro-microscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy, X-ray and electron diffraction, coincidence spectroscopy. His actual areas of interest are surface reactivity and catalysis, ferroelectric and ferromagnetic materials, 2D systems, being one of the leaders worldwide in studying molecular adsorption/desorption and surface chemical reactions on atomically clean ferroelectric surfaces and also hysteretic transport properties in graphene channels with ferroelectric gates, correlated with surface science analysis (XPS, NEXAFS, LEED, STM).
His team also demonstrated the use of photoelectron spectro-microscopy with contrast in binding energy to characterize non-invasively ferroelectric domains and also the ability of the low energy electron diffraction (LEED) technique to derive the outer surface potential and to quantify dead layers at the surface of a ferroelectric single crystal film.
He teaches at the University of Bucharest lessons on surface science, molecular beam epitaxy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy at Masters degree and at the Doctoral School of Physics, and has lead 6 PhD students to date. He is also actually the President of the Scientific Council of the National Institute of Materials Physics.
During the last two decades, he was leader of R&D projects of about 7.5 M€ (2004–2019) and of an infrastructure project (2018–2020) of about 11 M€.
Honors & Awards
Third prize, International Physics Olympiad, Sigtuna, Sweden, 1984.
“Radu Grigorovici” Prize of the Romanian Academy, awarded in 2015 for results obtained in 2013.
Website and Scientific profiles