Portrait of Professor Arnold
Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Thomas Arnold has held the Endowed Chair for Ultra-Precision Surface Machining Using Ions and Plasmas since August 1, 2014. He also heads the "Non-conventional Surface Processing" working group at the Leibniz Institute for Surface Modification in Leipzig. He was born in 1975 in Schkeuditz.
Without the ultra-precision processing of surfaces, it would not be possible to manufacture modern, high-precision optics, such as those used in semiconductor chip production, in reflector telescopes on Earth or on satellites. The special plasma and ion tools will be used to explore the limits of what is physically possible in terms of surface precision.
For me, being a professor... means taking students on an exciting journey into an extraordinarily interdisciplinary field and getting them excited about science. It's about teaching how problems can be analyzed and then solved independently. The Endowed Chair also offers an excellent opportunity to work on cutting-edge issues together with many partners from research and industry.
In addition to acquiring a sound basic knowledge of engineering science, students should also be enabled to work in an interdisciplinary manner and in teams with other experts. This often opens their eyes to the possibilities and limitations of implementing a technically sound solution in practice.
In the future, the applications of ultra-precision machining will continue to penetrate everyday life, be it in ever faster and smaller computers or other technical devices. Optical technologies are driving the demands on the accuracy of surfaces and therefore new possibilities will certainly be found again and again to push the limits of what is feasible a little further.
If I could study again, I would focus much more on the humanities methods of gaining knowledge in addition to the natural sciences and try to combine the different ways of thinking.
Excellence is the incentive to push research and teaching to the highest possible level.