Science News

A team of scientists in the Department of Interface Science was able to exploit the dynamic structural and chemical nature of Cu surfaces under pulsed electrocatalytic reaction conditions to convert the greenhouse gas CO₂ into a fuel such as ethanol. more

At the beginning of the new decade, all data acquisition and analysis systems developed by the PP&B IT group will be compatible with the "bluesky" framework. This software was developed at NSLS-II and is another collaborative development in the EPICS [1] environment. more

Highly-selective Cu-based catalysts for CO₂ electroreduction were synthesized using electrolyte-induced nanostructuring of a Cu foil. In addition to enhanced surface roughness, the effect is associated with the formation and stability of Cu⁺ species as revealed by operando spectroscopy. more

In the nanometer length-scale, structural stability is prone to ultrafast motions that range from atomic vibrations to translations and rotations of entire nanostructures. To study the rotational motions of entire nanoparticles, we establish femtosecond electron diffraction as goniometer of ultrafast nanocrystal rotations. To achieve our scope we have combined experiments that use ultrashort pulses of electrons and photons, with detailed simulations of molecular dynamics and electron diffraction. more

Probing the structure of a material's excited electrons can reveal a lot about its properties. By mapping the excited states and their dynamics across the full Brillouin zone in In/Si(111) nanowires with trARPES we find evidence of a momentum-dependent excitonic coupling and a strongly non-equilibrium phonon distribution after photo-excitation. more

Molecular movies of atoms moving during a reaction have advanced our understanding of chemistry. Yet only the dynamics of the electronic structure, an “electron movie”, completes the picture of the mechanisms driving chemical reactions and the making and breaking of bonds. more