4. Conclusions

Over the last few decades, surface and interface physics has become an increasingly important sub-discipline of the condensed matter field, at the crossroads of physics, crystallography, chemistry, biology and materials science. Driven by the need for new materials and by the downsizing of electronic and optoelectronic devices, the diversity of recent developments in this field is enabling us to better apprehend the full wealth of electronic properties of the surfaces of solid materials.

At the experimental level, the discovery and "democratization" of the scanning tunneling microscope and associated microscopies have made it possible to observe and even manipulate individual atoms on surfaces. The resolution of techniques based on photoemission makes it possible to study phenomena on an ever finer scale, and to gain access to the intrinsic properties of the ground...