Magnus Johnson

Magnus Johnson works at the Department of Chemistry and studies the chemistry and structure of surfaces at the nano level. Although there are very few molecules on a surface compared to the rest of the material, the surface largely determines how a material interacts with the environment (for example water) and therefore this type of studies is important in many areas such as corrosion and packaging materials.

A large part of the research involves laser spectroscopy where the vibrations of molecules are studied to draw conclusions about what type of molecules that are present on a surface, how the molecules are arranged and how the surface reacts with surrounding molecules.

Magnus has carried out a lot of research about what happens to a metal surface when it corrodes and how the surface can be protected, for example by the natural material lignin that can be extracted from wood.

For many materials, a surface does not look the same everywhere if you study it at the nano level, and Magnus uses infrared nanospectroscopy to study this. The focus is on how wood and cellulose-based materials are built up, for example cell walls in wood and "nanocellulose" extracted from wood. Studies have also been carried out to increase the understanding of how phospholipids build up cell membranes.