Surfaces play a very important role in many phenomena: many chemical reactions happen of catalytic surfaces, surfaces of metals can serve as substrates for self-assembly of large molecules. In this way one can achieve molecular manipulation, which can lead to a creation of molecular nanodevices. To have a precise control on such manipulation, one needs to understand  fundamental physics of what is happening on a surface, which is a very deep physics.  We do it with a help of the most sophisticated computational methods available today.

Example of research

Mura M., Self-Assembly of Flat Organic Molecules on Metal Surfaces: A Theoretical Characterisation (Springer, Heidelberg, 2012) 169 p.