Department Atomic-Scale Dynamics in Light-Energy Conversion
News
Christoph's paper on solvated electrons from nanodiamonds in published in Nanoscale!
Congrats, Christoph! Check out the paper here.
Hanna spoils us during group meeting!
What a treat! Hanna made vegan, vegetarian, and carnivore bread sticks. Yum!
Article published in Angewandte Chemie!
Our article on Ni-based photoredox catalysis was published in Angew. Chem. ! This work resulted from a collaboration with the groups of Arne Thomas, Bart Pieber, Henrike Müller-Werkmeister, and Josh Vura-Weis. Check it out.
Hungry, but happy: (from left to right) Jack, Laura, Rachel, Thomas, Renske, Conner and Tyler are waiting for the Mexican food in a restaurant in Lemont, Illinois. © Renske van der Veen / HZB
September 2022 - Beamtime at the APS
Renske and Thomas joined Rachel’s and Jack’s beamtime at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory just south of Chicago. It was an exhausting but successful six-days/24-hours transient-hard-X-ray-absorption-measurement marathon of bimetallic molecular complexes relevant for photocatalysis.
After careful subtraction of the gas-phase ammonia spectrum, we were able to identify a broad shoulder in the nitrogen 1s Auger spectrum that can be assigned to ICD and shake-up satellite states. © Structural Dynamics 9, 044901 (2022)
August 2022 - Our article about intermolecular Coulombic decay in liquid ammonia has been published in Structural Dynamics.
Our colleagues from FHI (Winter group) and from Prague (Slavíček group and Hanns Christian Schewe from Jungwirth group) together with Robert measured Auger spectra of liquid ammonia for the first time. The intermolecular Coulombic decay (ICD) fingerprints are hidden under a shoulder on the high-energy side of the normal nitrogen Auger peak overlaid by shake-up satellites. In ICD, an initially core or inner-valence ionized atom or molecule electronically decays, and the released energy ionizes a neighboring entity via Coulombic electron interactions. Thanks to the theorists from Prague, we were able to deconvolute the messy Auger-peak structure, and our calculations support that ICD does indeed contribute. Liquid ammonia is a hydrogen-bonded system, and the electronic processes can couple to nuclear dynamics following core-level ionization. Unlike in liquid water, we found no significant proton-transfer dynamics occurring between the hydrogen-bonded units within the respective N 1s core-hole lifetime. You can read more about this fascinating basic-research study here.
Aswin on his first tour through the BESSY II synchrotron. © Hanna Trzesniowski / HZB
August 2022 - Welcome Aswin!
Phd candidate Aswin Jyothilakshmi Ravi (in short JR) from Kozhikode, India, joined PS-ADLU. A very warm welcome!
Robert next to his poster at the GRC in Holderness, New Hampshire. © Robert Seidel / HZB
July 2022 - Gordon Research Conference in Holderness
After a three-year hiatus due to the Corona pandemic, Robert attended the Gordon Research Conference of Water and Aqueous Solutions in Holderness, New Hampshire, USA. He presented recent liquid microjet data from sulfuric acid in water. From the valence and core-level spectra we can derive the dissociation constant as a function of probing depth, temperature and concentration. These dissociation constants are important input parameters for various climate (change) models, since aqueous aerosols of sulfate and bisulfate ions play a crucial role in cloud formation.
July 2022 - Our department becomes part of the UniSysCat cluster
UniSysCat stands for Unifying Systems in Catalysis, which is a Cluster of Excellence. More than 260 researchers from four universities and four research institutes in the Berlin and Potsdam area work together on current challenges in the highly relevant field of catalysis.
We are looking forward to many fruitful collaborations!
July 2022 - Thomas attends the Ultrafast Phenomena conference
Together with Jack and Rachel from UIUC he enjoyed many good talks & French croissants...
Thomas, Jack & Rachel enjoying themselves in Montreal
The weather changed dramatically during the two-day retreat. ©Robert Seidel / HZB
June 2022 - HZB retreat in Schmöckwitz
Our annual 2-day retreat for all group leaders at the HZB took place in beautiful Schmöckwitz, located at the very east of Berlin on the border to Brandenburg. A tightly packed schedule with talks, presentations and group discussions on the strategies and future plans of BESSY II and III awaited Renske and Robert.
Martin Gruebele and Renske van der Veen on big tour through BESSY II: control room (upper left), experimental hall (upper right), in the BESSY tunnel (lower left), at the SOL³PES station (lower right). © Robert Seidel / HZB
June 2022 - Martin Gruebele from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign visited us.
Martin is a former colleague of Renske in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Renske and Robert gave Martin a detailed tour through the BESSY synchrotron tunnel and the storage ring. Thanks to the ongoing shutdown we could show him all sacred places at BESSY II.
March/April 2022 - Jack, Rachel & Conner visit BESSY II
PhD students Jack, Rachel, and Conner from UIUC flew all the way from Illinois to Berlin for three weeks of beam time at the UE52_SGM beam line at BESSY.
May 2022 - PS-ADLU grows!
Robert Seidel and his group joined Renske van der Veen’s Department of Atomic-Scale Dynamics in Light-Energy Conversion (PS-ADLU). A warm welcome everyone!