Layer design serves one or both of two purposes: First, for designing useful sensor systems. “Useful” in this case means focusing on systems that are potentially interesting for industrial partners, both in Austria, and beyond. Consequently, the group participates in collaborative projects together with industry partners to make “real-life” testing of those systems possible. Second, we aim at understanding binding of analytes to our layers and hence recognition better, for instance by characterizing with spectrometry, AFM, SEM, to name but a few. In terms of sensor measurements, the group has built itself an international reputation in mass-sensitive sensing, mainly based on quartz crystal microbalances (QCMs). We produce those in-house, which allows for maximum possible flexibility and versatility of the systems. Other techniques complement those measurements: Currently, those are mainly surface plasmon resonance (SPR), surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and impedance (spectroscopy).