Franz Josef Giessibl

Franz Josef Gießibl (born 27 May 1962 in Amerang) is a German physicist and university professor at the University of Regensburg.

Life 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, 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.

In 2005, he obtained offers for a chair at the University of Bristol (England) and University of Regensburg (Germany). In 2006, he joined the faculty at the Department of Physics at the University of Regensburg in Germany. From about 2005, he collaborated with the scanning tunneling microscopy groups of IBM Almaden Research Center (Science 2008) and IBM Zurich Research Laboratory studying single-electron charges on single gold atoms (Science 2009). and from about 2010 with National Institute of Standards and Technology (Nature Comm. 2021). to help to establish combined scanning tunneling microscopy and atomic force microscopy at ultralow temperatures. He was a visiting fellow at the center for nanoscience and technology (CNST) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and a visiting professor at University of Maryland, College Park from fall 2015 to spring 2016 and at National University of Singapore with several research visits 2023 to 2025 (Nature 2025)..

Some of Giessibl's experimental and simulated images inspired the offset print editions Erster Blick (2000) and Graphit (2004) by visual artist Gerhard Richter.

Franz Giessibl is married and has two sons.

Scientific contributions Giessibl established atomic force microscopy as a surface science tool with atomic resolution, launching the field of Non-contact atomic force microscopy. ScholarGPS lists him among the six most highly ranked scholars in atomic force microscopy (lifetime) and among the 14 most highly ranked scholars in microscopy (lifetime). Together with his team, he even obtained subatomic spatial resolution , and published papers on ground breaking experiments, instrumentation and theoretical foundations of atomic force microscopy. Giessibl is the inventor of the qPlus sensor, 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: Built the first low-temperature force microscope for ultrahigh vacuum with Gerd Binnig (PhD adviser) and Christoph Gerber

and obtained atomic resolution on KBr with it . KBr has a very low reactivity, yet major challenges such as jump-to-contact of AFM tip and sample had to be overcome to obtain atomic resolution. 1992: Proposed a mechanism allowing atomic resolution in noncontact-AFM

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

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, ). 1997: Introduces a formula that connects frequency shifts and forces for large amplitudes

2000: Obtains atomic spatial resolution using qPlus sensor

2000: Observes subatomic resolution on tip features

2001: Invents an algorithm to deconvolute forces from frequency shifts

2003: Extended version of his habilitation thesis is published in Reviews of Modern Physics

2003: Obtaines atomically resolved lateral force microscopy

2004: Achieves sub-Angstrom resolution on tip features using a qPlus sensor in a low temperature AFM using higher harmonic force microscopy

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

and single-electron charges on single gold atoms

2012: Introduces carbon monoxide front atom identification (COFI), a method for the atomic and subatomic characterization of scanning probe tips

2013: Observes evidence for superexchange interaction and very low noise data of exchange interactions between CoSm tips and antiferromagnetic NiO

2013: Observes atomic resolution in ambient conditions without special sample preparation

2014: Measurement of CO-CO interactions by lateral force microscopy

2015: Atomic resolution of few atom metal clusters and subatomic resolution of single metal atoms

2016: Simultaneous inelastic tunneling spectroscopy and AFM

AFM with superconductive tips

Multifrequency AFM using bimodal qPlus sensors

2018: Simultaneous inelastic tunneling spectroscopy and AFM shows bond weakening effect

2018: Joint study with John Sader group on well- and ill posed force deconvolution schemes

2019: Review article about qPlus sensors and applications

2021: Measurement of very weak bonds to artificial atoms formed by quantum corrals

Selected publications

Books

Awards

1994: R&D 100 Award (together with Brian Trafas) 2000: Deutscher Nanowissenschaftspreis 2001: Rudolf-Kaiser-Preis 2009: Karl Heinz Beckurts-Preis 2014: Joseph F. Keithley Award For Advances in Measurement Science of the American Physical Society 2015: Rudolf-Jaeckel Prize of the German Vacuum Society 2016: Foresight Institute Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology 2023: Innovation in Materials Characterization Award of the Materials Research Society (USA) 2024: Heinrich Rohrer Medal – Grand Medal by Surface Science Society of Japan and IBM Research 2024: National Institute for Materials Science Award - NIMS Award Honors 2023: Fellow of the American Physical Society (USA)

2024: International Fellow of Japan Society of Vacuum and Surface Science (JVSS) 2025: Member of European Academy of Sciences and Art (EASA) 2025: Fellow of European Academy of Sciences (EurASc) 2026: Distinguished Fellow of International Engineering and Technology Institute (IETI)

Special Lectures 2010: Ehrenfest Kolloquium Leiden (27 October 2010) (Netherlands) 2013: Zernike Kolloquium Groningen (Netherlands) 2023: Erster Blick in das Innere eines Atoms. Begegungen mit Gerhard Richter zwischen Kunst und Wissenschaft, Waldhaus Sils, Schweiz (19. März 2023) 2024: Scanning probe microscopy with qPlus sensors, Distinguished Colloquium Peking University, China (19 July 2024) 2025: Seeing Dents in the Atom, Plenary talk at the Spring Meeting of the German Physical Society, Section Condensed Matter, University of Regensburg, (17 March 2025)