7. Conclusion

Today, the surfaces of solid materials are of great technological interest. This has led to an ever-increasing search for components with very well-controlled physical properties in ever-smaller dimensions. Surfaces are particularly well-suited to this research, as they are made up of a much smaller quantity of material than solid material. In many cases, they also possess special properties not found in solid materials, which modern manufacturing and processing techniques are striving to master and control. All these surface techniques are undergoing ever-increasing development. Materials engineering applied to surfaces finds a natural extension in multi-layer systems. By stacking several alternating layers of different materials, we multiply the number of surfaces - in this case interfaces - in a microscopic volume. Multilayers themselves display original properties in the magnetic, electronic...