New instrument at BESSY II: The OÆSE endstation in EMIL
The new end station was set up in the EMIL laboratory. © R. Garcia-Diez /HZB
Scheme of the endstation, including the sample environment, the analysis chamber and the operando beamline section. © HZB
A new instrument is now available at BESSY II for investigating catalyst materials, battery electrodes and other energy devices under operating conditions: the Operando Absorption and Emission Spectroscopy on EMIL (OÆSE) endstation in the Energy Materials In-situ Laboratory Berlin (EMIL). A team led by Raul Garcia-Diez and Marcus Bär showcases the instrument’s capabilities via a proof-of-concept study on electrodeposited copper.
Solar cells, catalysts, and batteries are composed of so-called energy materials, i.e., materials that either convert or store energy. Their functionality is based on complex chemical or physical processes. In order to improve their functionality, it is crucially required to understand those processes, ideally while they are taking place, i.e. by in situ and operando studies. A new experimental station enabling corresponding experiments is now available at the Energy Materials In-situ Laboratory Berlin (EMIL) located at the synchrotron facility BESSY II.
The “Operando Absorption and Emission Spectroscopy on EMIL” (OÆSE) provides detailed insights into the electronic and chemical structures of materials and interfaces and their changes during critical (electro)chemical processes via X-ray absorption (XAS) and emission (XES) spectroscopy .
At the heart of the OÆSE endstation is a modular and flexible in situ/operando sample environment, specially tailored to tackle the specific research questions required for each energy material, which design ensures easy adaptation to different experiments.
To demonstrate the capabilities of the OÆSE endstation, the team led by Raul Garcia-Diez and Marcus Bär studied in situ the electrochemical deposition of copper from an aqueous CuSO4 electrolyte using combined soft and hard X-ray absorption spectroscopy exploiting the two-color beamline of EMIL. The case study shows that the new endstation offers valuable insights into dynamic electrochemical processes and thus enables a better understanding of complex electrochemical systems.
- Blind spot for the arrangement of atomsArtificial intelligence is increasingly being used to predict the properties of new materials. A research team from Jena and the United States now shows in a study published in the journal Nature Computational Science that when language models are used for this purpose, they reliably identify which types of atoms a material contains. However, they make insufficient use of information about how those atoms are arranged in space. Neither larger models nor additional training data resolve this weakness. For material properties that depend strongly on structure, AI models specifically designed to process spatial relationships are therefore the more reliable choice. (DOI: 10.1038/s43588-026-01045-2)
- Patterns of polar vortices in lead-free superlattices on siliconA team at HZB has, for the first time, reported polar vortices in (BaTiO3/SrTiO3)10 superlattices on silicon. These results expand the range of materials and substrates on which polar topological textures can occur and open up new options for incorporating complex ferroelectric states into silicon-based technologies.
- HZB congratulates Peter Hegemann on winning the Nobel PrizeOur warmest congratulations go to Peter Hegemann, Professor of Neuroscience and Experimental Biophysics at Humboldt University in Berlin. Together with Prof. Georg Nagel (Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg) and Prof. Karl Deisseroth (Stanford University, USA), he has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. We are delighted for him, his team, Humboldt University and the entire Berlin scientific community.