Biosketch

Roman Fasel received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1996 from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and joined EMPA, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, after post-doctoral research fellowships at La Trobe University (Melbourne) and the Fritz-Haber-Institute (Berlin). He is currently the head of the nanotech@surfaces Laboratory of EMPA, and since 2008 Tit. Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry of the University of Bern. RF has a strong background in experimental surface physics and chemistry, and follows an experimental approach building on state-of-the-art scanning probe methods (UHV temperature-controlled STM/STS) combined with structural and spectroscopic methods based on x-ray photoelectron emission (XPS, UPS, XPD). His group’s research covers a wide range of topics at the interface of materials science, surface physics and chemistry, with the aim of understanding molecular processes at surfaces at a molecular and atomic level. RF has obtained several Research Fellowships of e.g. the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Alexander-von-Humboldt-Stiftung and the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Recipient of several awards, e.g. Thürler-Reeb Prize and ICSOS Young Scientist Prize. Member of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Nanoscale Science, Board member of the IUVSTA Surface Science Division Committee. He has given numerous invited talks at international conferences and at research institutions and universities world-wide, and has published more than 90 papers in international journals.

Fields of interest

Surface physics and chemistry; Nanostructured materials and surfaces; Supramolecular engineering at surfaces; Molecular self-assembly; On-surface chemistry; Graphene and graphene-based materials

Selected publications 

• M. Treier, C. A. Pignedoli, T. Laino, R. Rieger, K. Müllen, D. Passerone, and R. Fasel, Surface-assisted cyclodehydrogenation provides a synthetic route towards easily processable and chemically tailored nanographenes, Nature Chemistry 3, 61–67 (2011). DOI: 10.1038/nchem.891
• J. Cai, P. Ruffieux, R. Jaafar, M. Bieri, T. Braun, S. Blankenburg, M. Muoth, A. P. Seitsonen, M. Saleh, X. Feng, K. Müllen, and R. Fasel, Atomically precise bottom-up fabrication of graphene nanoribbons, Nature 466, 470–473 (2010). DOI: 10.1038/nature09211
• M. Bieri, M. Treier, J. Cai, K. Aït-Mansour, P. Ruffieux, O. Gröning, P. Gröning, M. Kastler, R. Rieger, X. Feng, K. Müllen, and R. Fasel, Porous graphenes: Two-dimensional polymer synthesis with atomic precision, Chem. Commun. 45, 6919-6921 (2009). DOI: 10.1039/b915190g
• M. Treier, M.-T. Nguyen, N.V. Richardson, C. Pignedoli, D. Passerone, and R. Fasel, Tailoring low-dimensional organic semiconductor nanostructures, Nano Lett. 9 (1), 126-131 (2009). DOI: 10.1021/nl802676x
• M. Cañas-Ventura, W. Xiao, D. Wasserfallen, K. Müllen, H. Brune, J. V. Barth, and R. Fasel, Self-assembly of periodic bicomponent wires and ribbons, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 46, 1814-1818 (2007); Angew. Chem. 119, 1846-1850 (2007). DOI: 10.1002/anie.200604083
• R. Fasel, M. Parschau, and K.-H. Ernst, Amplification of chirality in enantiomorphous lattices, Nature 439, 449-452 (2006). DOI: 10.1038/nature04419