Giessibl studied physics from 1982 to 1987 at the Technical University of Munich and at Eidgenössische Technischen Hochschule Zürich. He received a diploma in experimental physics in 1988 with Professor Gerhard Abstreiter and continued with a PhD in physics with Nobel Laureate Gerd Binnig at the IBM Physics Group Munich on atomic force microscopy. After submitting his PhD thesis in the end of 1991, he continued for 6 months as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the IBM Physics Group Munich and moved to Silicon Valley to join Park Scientific Instruments, Inc as a senior scientist and later director of vacuum products from mid 1992 until the end of 1994. He joined the Munich office of management consulting firm McKinsey & Company from 1995 to 1996 as a senior associate. During that time, he invented the qPlus sensor,[1] a new probe for atomic force microscopy and continued experimental and theoretical work on the force microscope at the chair of Professor Jochen Mannhart at University of Augsburg where he received a habilitation in 2001.
Some of Giessibl's experimental and simulated images inspired the offset print editions Erster Blick (2000) [4] and Graphit (2004) by visual artist Gerhard Richter.[5]
Franz Giessibl is married and has two sons.
Scientific contributions
Giessibl established atomic force microscopy as a surface science tool with atomic resolution,[6] launching the field of Non-contact atomic force microscopy. Together with his team, he even obtained subatomic spatial resolution (F.J. Giessibl, S. Hembacher, H. Bielefeldt, J. Mannhart, Science 2000),[7][8][9][10][11] and published papers on ground breaking experiments,[12][13] instrumentation[14]
and theoretical foundations[15][16]
of atomic force microscopy.
Giessibl is the inventor of the qPlus sensor,[17][18] a sensor for Non-contact atomic force microscopy that relies on a quartz cantilever. His invention has enabled atomic force microscopy to obtain subatomic spatial resolution on individual atoms and submolecular resolution on organic molecules. Today, the qPlus sensor is used in more than 500 commercial and homebuilt atomic force microscopes around the world.
1992: Proposed a mechanism allowing atomic resolution in noncontact-AFM Phys Rev B 1992).
1994: Solved the problem of imaging reactive samples and obtained for the first time atomic resolution on Silicon 7x7 by force microscopy using frequency-modulation atomic force microscopy in noncontact mode with large amplitudes (Science 1995).
1996: Invented the qPlus sensor, a self sensing AFM quartz sensor that is self sensing (piezoelectric effect), highly stable in frequency and stiff enough to allow sub-Angstrom oscillation amplitudes (Patents DE19633546, US6240771, Appl. Phys. Lett. 1998).
1997: Introduces a formula that connects frequency shifts and forces for large amplitudes (Phys Rev B 1997).
2005–2008: Helps to spread out qPlus sensor technology to IBM Research Laboratories Almaden and Rüschlikon, leading to measurements of forces that act during atomic manipulation (M. Ternes, C.P. Lutz, C. Hirjibehedin, F.J. Giessibl, A. Heinrich, Science 2008) and single-electron charges on single gold atoms (Science 2009).
2012: Introduces carbon monoxide front atom identification (COFI), a method for the atomic and subatomic characterization of scanning probe tips (J. Welker, F.J. Giessibl, Science 2012).
Gießibl, Franz J. (4 February 2022). Erster Blick in das Innere eines Atoms - Begegnungen mit Gerhard Richter zwischen Kunst und Wissenschaft (in German). Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König. ISBN978-3-7533-0174-7.
Gießibl, Franz J. (8 February 2022). First View Inside an Atom: Encounters with Gerhard Richter Between Art and Science. Walther Konig Verlag. ISBN978-3-7533-0188-4.
Awards and honors
1994: R&D 100 Award (together with Brian Trafas)[20]
^Kopnarski, Michael (2015). "Rudolf Jaeckel-Preis 2015 an Prof. Dr. Franz J. Gießibl". Vakuum in Forschung und Praxis. 27 (5): 38. doi:10.1002/vipr.201590050. S2CID98336631.