Physics and Chemistry of Interfaces

Hans-Jürgen Butt is Director at the Max Planck Institue for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany. He studied physics in Hamburg and Göttingen, Germany. Then he went to the Max-Planck-Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1989 he went as a post-doc to Santa Barbara, California, using the newly developed atomic force microscope. From 1990-95 he spent as a researcher back in Germany at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysics. In 1996 he became associate professor for physical chemistry at the University Mainz, three years later full professor at the University of Siegen. Only two years later he joined the Max-Planck-Institute of Polymer Research in Mainz and became director for Experimental Physics.

Karlheinz Graf graduated at the Institute for Physical Chemistry in Mainz, and spent a postdoc year at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He has served as Project leader at the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research, where his research concentrates on droplet evaporation, the structuring of polymer surfaces, and on constructing a MPIA which is a special AFM capable of measuring forces between a solid surface and an adaptive lipid monolayer in a Langmuir trough. Afterwards he was acting Professor in the Physical and in the Analytical Chemistry of the University of Siegen and, later on, a staff scientist at the Gutmann group at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Recently he became Professor for Physical Chemistry at the University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule Niederrhein) in Krefeld.

Michael Kappl studied physics at the University of Regensburg and the Technical University of Munich, and did his PhD thesis work in Ernst Bamberg's group at the Max-Planck-Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt. After a year of postdoctoral research at the University of Mainz in the group of Prof. Butt, he worked as a consultant for Windows NT network solutions at the Pallas Soft AG, Regensburg. In 2000, he rejoined the group of Prof. Butt. Since 2002 he is project leader at the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research. By using focused ion beam methods, his investigates the adhesion and friction of micro- and nanocontacts, and capillary forces.