Water is arguably the most important molecule on Earth – playing a critical role in processes within physiology, at the ocean surface, and in the atmosphere. As these processes involve interfaces between water and other media, however, it is primarily the incredibly thin layer of water directly at the boundary that governs their behaviour. Crucially, the sheer presence of the interface perturbs the molecular structure of water, generating preferential orientations and an altered H-bond network, which [more...]

Melanie Müller, head of the “Ultrafast Scanning Probe Microscopy” research group in the PC Department, took up a new professorship for experimental condensed matter physics at the University of Bonn on April 1, 2026. The group’s research continues to focus on the experimental investigation of light-matter interactions at the atomic scale and on ultrafast time scales. By combining low-temperature scanning probe microscopy with ultrashort light pulses and high-resolution spectroscopy, her group explores the ultrafast dynamics and out-of-equilibrium behavior of solid-state [more...]