9527092 Hochella This grant provides $109,205 in support of the costs of funding a two-year postdoctoral position and necessary equipment to develop scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) methods for interrogating mineral surfaces exposed to O2 and H2O under ultra-high vacuum (UHV). This research has great potential to elucidate the atomic-level electronic structure and reactivity of many minerals of relevance to low temperature environmental geochemistry. The work will be done using an existing Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) and will include the development of standardized procedures for preparing mineral surfaces for STS analyses, preparation of STS tips for density-of-state-flattening and methods of data collection. ***
