The State Key Laboratory for Surface Physics was founded in 1987 as one of the first ten state key laboratories in China. Prof. Xun Wang and Prof. Dingsheng Wang served the first term of the Academic Steering Committee Chair and Lab Director, respectively. Subsequent lab directors include Prof. Zhangda Lin, Prof. Enge Wang, Prof. Qikun Xue, and Prof. Shiwu Gao. The current Academic Steering Committee Chair is Prof. Qikun Xue and the Lab Director is Prof. Jiandong Guo. 

The Laboratory owns a young talented research team, including 27 faculty members, 4 post doctors and 88 graduate students. Our mission is to explore the fundamental aspects of novel phenomena at surfaces and interfaces, with a combination of atom-resolved experimental tools and first principle calculations. Our researches specialize in fabrication, characterization and functionalization of artificial materials with potential applications in information technology, energy and nano science. Current research activities include the controlled growth of low-dimensional nanomaterial with atomic precision, development of novel instruments with high resolution in multiple degrees of freedom, and investigation with such novel tools on the localized phenomena as well as their collective behaviors at surfaces and interfaces, effect of the microstructure on macroscopic properties, and dynamic behavior in excited electronic states. There are six research groups in the Lab:

•      In-Situ Transmission Electron Microscopy and Properties of Low-dimensional Structures
•      Atomic Processes on Surface and Film Growth
•      Detection, Control, and Dynamics of Single Molecules and Elementary Excitations
•      Growth of Artificial Low-dimensional Oxide Structures and the Functionality Control
•      MBE Growth and Electronic Properties of Low-dimensional Materials
•      Surface Excitation and Energy Conversion 

The Lab has been very active in undertaking major national scientific projects, including the Major National Scientific Research Program–Developing Nanocharacterization Methods Based on Scanning Probe Microscopy Technique (chief scientist: Xuedong Bai and Zhi Xu), the Key Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences – the Magnetic Helium Atom Scattering Spectroscopy (Primary Investigator: Jiandong Guo), and several other National Key Research and Development Programs of Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, as well as the key projects of National Natural Science Fund of China.

Significant research progresses have been made in the Lab and have attracted lots of attention worldwide. During the past five years, we have published more than 250 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and filed tens of patents. Prizes and honorary have been awarded to Lab members, including the Leading Talents of Science and Technology Innovation (Kehui Wu, 2017), the Leading Talents of Science and Technology Innovation within the Ten-Thousand Talents Program (Kehui Wu, 2018), the Annual News Figure of Science in China – the Science Communicators (Zexian Cao, 2018), and the New Star Award of IOP (Xuetao Zhu, 2018). Kehui Wu was awarded the National Natural Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholar in 2018.

It is our high priority to provide all members a first-class research platform and a harmonic environment for communications and collaborations, which we believe being crucial for the growing research talents. Since the founding of Lab in 1987, three lab members (Dingsheng Wang, Qikun Xue and Enge Wang) have been elected to the Academy of Chinese Academy of Sciences, ten have received National Distinguished Young Scientists Awards, three have received National Excellent Young Scientists Awards.