Prof. Dr. Rolf Erni

Rolf Erni is the head of the Electron Microscopy Center at Empa Dübendorf. He has been lecturer at the Department of Materials at ETH Zürich since 2013, and titular professor since 2022. Rolf studied materials science and received his doctoral degree from ETH Zürich at the (formerly) Institute of Applied Physics. Thereafter he carried out postdoctoral studies at the University of California at Davis and at the National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He then joined FEI Company as an application specialist and was later in the role of a system engineer. Before returning to NCEM as a staff scientist, he spent a period of time as a faculty member at the EMAT institute (Electron Microscopy for Materials Science) of the University of Antwerp.

Rolf's research interests cover various topics in electron microscopy, such as atomic resolution and low-voltage electron microscopy, in-situ electron microscopy and (valence) electron energy-loss spectroscopy. In collaboration with various research groups, he has published articles in numerous fields ranging from atomic-scale studies of precipitates in binary alloys, valence electron energy-loss spectroscopy, interplanetary dust particles, carbon nanomaterials, semiconductor nanostructures and nanoparticles, complex functional oxides, and in the field of aberration-corrected high-resolution electron microscopy.