Surface science is a very large field, which included many subfield ... who working in surface science are multidisciplinary, and need to understand the basic science (in physics, chemistry or biology). There are many famous scientists devote their time and effort to advance our knowledge in surface science, the most important of them are:
Paul Sabatier in Hydrogenation
Fritz Haber in Haber process (a main industrial route to produce ammonia)
Ivring Langmuir (he worked in different subjects related to surface chemistry ... )
Gerthard Ertl (who studied the adsorption of hydrogen atom on surface of palladium at molecular level)
There are many techniques have been widely used in surface science. The most advanced of them are low energy electron diffraction (LEED), ultra high vacuum chamber (UHV), sum frequency generation (SFG) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). Apart from that, vibrational spectroscopy (IR and Raman), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and mass spectroscopy (MS) are essential to understand the surface chemistry and the composition of interested materials.
Generally, there are two challenges that surface scientists must overcome are the pressure gap and the materials gap. Those gaps reflect the differences in condition of experiment in laboratory and that of reality. Surface scientists need to bridge those gaps, and make the experiments closer to the real condition in terms of pressure (at normal pressure or high pressure) and in terms of materials (nanomaterials in the order of 1-10nm).
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