Ferromagnetism is known since the discovery of magnetite in the province magnesia in Asian Minor. Since that time this phenomenon fascinated many people. Today the investigation of magnetism is a growing section of  material sciences which has an exceptional impact on information technology, electrical engineering, and automotive applications . 

For fostering further progress in these  fields, the investigation and growing understanding of new specific and smart materials and hybrid systems is a necessary precondition. The main focus of our research is on the investigation of the electronic origin of macroscopic magnetic particles. A second focus is on interface and surface effects, which dominate magnetic properties for nanoscale system.

Alongside miniaturization in the semiconductor industry, information technology has tremendously benefitted from the exponential increase of magnetic storage density on hard disk drives, doubling the amount of storable information every two years (Moore's Law). New physical effects discovered in the course of storage research paves the way for a new type of electronics called spintronics with the spin instead of the charge being the carrier for information transport.

We study electronic transport and correlation  effects for nanoscale and molecular systems using spinresolving experimental methodes, e.g. spinpolarized scanning tunneling microscopy, spin-resolved photoemission microscopy and x-ray magnetic circular dichroism.