University of Groningen Graphene and doped graphene from adsorbed molecules Zehra, Tashfeen

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University of Groningen

Graphene and doped graphene from adsorbed molecules Zehra, Tashfeen

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Publication date: 2018

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Zehra, T. (2018). Graphene and doped graphene from adsorbed molecules. University of Groningen.

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526016-L-bw-Zehra 526016-L-bw-Zehra 526016-L-bw-Zehra 526016-L-bw-Zehra Processed on: 16-11-2018 Processed on: 16-11-2018 Processed on: 16-11-2018

Processed on: 16-11-2018 PDF page: 134PDF page: 134PDF page: 134PDF page: 134

Acknowledgements

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Acknowledgements

The research I carried out during my PhD and the accomplishment of this thesis required a significant amount of help and support from many people. I take opportunity to owe a huge thanks to everyone. First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Petra Rudolf. Although the project I carried out was quite challenging, required hard work and a lot of time investment but with her help I was able to deal with so many difficulties. This thesis could not have been finished without her great support. Furthermore she gave me the opportunities to attend scientific activities abroad, thereby allowing me to present my work to the international community.

I gratefully thank the members of my reading committee, Prof T. Banerjee, Prof M. S. Golden and Prof B. Holst for investing time for reading and for approving the manuscript.

In particular I would like to thank Oleksii Ivashenko for teaching me XPS, for helping me to do measurements with the SSX spectrometer and for guiding me to understand the environment of the lab. I would like to give special thanks to Dr. Willem van Dorp for helping me to learn how to operate the Scienta spectrometer, for help with the scanning electron microscopes and for advice for my first project in Groningen. It was this experience that later on helped me to further proceed with other projects.

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Acknowledgements

127 Thank you very much for the many things you taught me, I really enjoyed working with you. I am grateful to Mihaela Enache for her help with the C59N project – your support with these experiments was crucial to their

success. I would like to thank Prof. Mieke Stöhr as well - I really enjoyed taking the course taught by you, which was very helpful later during my PhD project. I am grateful to Prof. Davide Bonifazi and Dr. Francesco Fasano for providing us thiol-borazine molecules and Prof. Nikos Tagmatarchis for C59N molecules.

My special thanks to my paranymphs: Ali Syariʹati and Leonid Solianyk for taking this responsibility at a time when both of you are also finishing your PhD projects. Ali, you are such a nice and helpful person. I shall never forget our lunch and coffee time discussions, times spent during conferences, collaborating in lab and discussing the results. I wish we had more time to collaborate in other projects. Leonid, seeing you growing into a confident person was very delightful. I enjoyed discussing all topics from scientific to non-scientific with you. Although our research projects were quite different, at the time of writing our discussions about XPS and other analysis made me realize that you really try to understand things to the deepest level. I wish both of you great success and luck with your future plans.

A special acknowledgement goes to my office mates Feng, Georgia and Martina for making the working environment so friendly. I shall definitely miss my office for a long time. I would like to thank all the present and former researchers of the Surfaces and Thin Films group, Anh, Brian, Estela, Juan, Jun. Jiquan, Kathrin, Luca, Lam, Nico, Oreste, Pascal, Stefano

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Acknowledgements

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and Sumit for the nice time we spent in lab and in the group. It was really nice to work with you all and I shall remember my time in this group.

I would like to thank Yvonne and Hilda for their help in administrative work. Special thanks to Jos Noteboom and to the late Luc Venema for their precious technical help in the lab.

Special thanks to Koen and Peter for the Dutch translation of the summary and Hummad for valuable help with the Urdu translation. My special gratitude to Naureen Akhtar: during my PhD there were so many moments where it was hard for me to move forward. You were always there to help and encourage me. I am lucky to have a friend like you. I wish you all the best for your future plans.

Besides all my colleagues and friends, I would like to thank my family. Without their support and encouragement, it would have been impossible to achieve what I have done and be where I stand today. In a world full of people who discourage you at each and every step of life, a family like you who always stood by my side in all situations is valuable to me more than anything.

October 2018, Groningen, Tashfeen Zehra