Doctorate for Felix T. Haase
Today, Felix T. Haase defended his doctoral thesis at TU Berlin. He carried out research on Surface reactivity of 3d transition metal-based model catalysts for the oxidation of small molecules.
Mr. Haase made several very important contributions to the basic understanding of electrocatalytic processes and paved the road for innovative catalyst designs to improve the efficiency of alkaline water electrolysis, a key technology for the production of molecular hydrogen (H2). His main findings contribute to a significantly improved operando mechanistic understanding of the parameters that influence the activity of Co-based nanocatalysts for the alkaline oxygen evolution reaction.
Mr. Haase comprehensively addressed the state-of-the-art of the field of alkaline oxygen evolution reaction and summarizes the developments in understanding Co-catalysed OER and its mechanism in alkaline but also neutral reaction conditions. He learnt to master and apply independently a great variety of experimental techniques. Some of them are highly complex and required very difficult data analysis routines. The experimental methods range from the synthesis of model size-selected CoOx nanoparticles (NPs) to the physicochemical characterization using AFM, XPS, ICP-MS and the electrochemical and -catalytic testing of a variety of electrocatalysts in well-defined reaction conditions as well as the operando studies.
Members of Felix Haase’s examination committee were Prof Dr. Kristina Tschulik from Ruhr-University Bochum, Prof Dr. Reinhard Schomäcker and Prof. Dr. Andrea Mroginski both from TU Berlin, and Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldán Cuenya from the Fritz Haber Institute (FHI) of the Max Planck Society. During his PhD work, Mr. Haase (ORCID) was able to publish 10 peer-review articles, two of them as first author, in high impact journals such as Nature Energy or JACS.
Felix Haase joined the FHI in November 2018 coming from Erlangen University with a very good theoretical and experimental background. He played an important role to build-up the electrochemical, synthesis and characterization laboratories and took over very important responsibility for various complex or sensitive instruments.
