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.
- Magnon momentum microscopy: A new window into nanoscale spin-wavesAn international team lead by the Max Born Institute has developed a new type of momentum microscopy to image magnons — the quanta of collectively excited spins — directly in two-dimensional reciprocal space using soft X-rays. Measurements have taken place at BESSY II and PETRA III, first author ist the HZB physicist Steffen Wittrock. Owing to its remarkable sensitivity, simplicity, and access to nanometer-scale wavelengths, this novel technique establishes a powerful and versatile platform for exploring nonlinear magnon interactions, which are promising for future computing schemes.
- X-ray analysis reveals overpainted fascist symbolsErich Mercker was a successful painter during the Nazi era and in the years that followed. After 1945, he covered up Nazi symbols in at least one of his paintings. With an interdisciplinary team, physicist Dr Ioanna Mantouvalou reports on this study in the Nature Journal Heritage Science.
- AI agents deliver results – but do they reason scientifically?A research team co-led by Kevin Maik Jablonka from the Helmholtz Institute for Polymers in Energy Applications Jena (HIPOLE Jena) and N. M. Anoop Krishnan from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi has developed Corral, a new benchmark for AI agents in science. The preprint “AI scientists produce results without reasoning scientifically” has been published on arXiv (https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.18805). The analysis shows that current systems can execute scientific workflows and deliver results; however, they often do not follow the basic principles of scientific testing and reasoning.