Researchers simultaneously monitored both the structure and function of a photovoltaic material as it crystallized from solution. The work raises the prospect of rationally tuning materials for optimal performance in photovoltaics and other light-manipulating devices, including light-emitting diodes, detectors, and lasers. Read more »
New Technique Paves the Way for Perfect Perovskites
A new solar material, organic-inorganic halide perovskites, could one day help the U.S. achieve its solar ambitions and decarbonize the power grid. A recent study reports that manufacturing could be aided by a new instrument that uses invisible x-ray light and visible laser light to probe a perovskite material’s crystal structure and optical properties as it is synthesized. Read more »
When Timing Isn’t Everything: Spontaneous Chemical Dynamics
Researchers combined aspects of x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) with correlation spectroscopy—a statistical method capable of detecting patterns in microscopic fluctuations across space and time. The new technique, called time-correlation XPS, allows researchers to monitor dynamics without the need for a timed trigger. Read more »
Exquisitely Selective CO2 Reduction on Silver
Researchers electrochemically reduced CO2 to CO with nearly perfect selectivity over other products by adding an organic compound to the surface of a silver electrode. With theoretical analyses and ALS data, the work revealed the key role of the microenvironment in promoting the conversion of CO2, a greenhouse gas, into useful products. Read more »
Chemical (and Strategic) Transformations at Beamline 9.0
The Chemical Dynamics beamline, used for gas-phase vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) experiments, was one of the first beamlines built at the ALS. Since then, the program has undergone several strategic transformations, enabling the study of complexity in clusters, aerosols, and nanoparticles using both VUV and soft x-ray radiation. Read more »
Key to Cleaner Combustion? Look to the Stars
Researchers made the first real-time, lab-based measurement of free radicals reacting under cosmic conditions, prompting elementary carbon and hydrogen atoms to coalesce into primal benzene rings. The findings are key to understanding how the universe evolved with the growth of carbon compounds and could also help the car industry make cleaner combustion engines. Read more »
Gas-phase synthesis of corannulene—a molecular building block of fullerenes
Fullerenes have been implicated to play a key role in the astrochemical evolution of the interstellar medium. However, the formation mechanism of even their simplest molecular building block—corannulene—has remained elusive. Here we demonstrate that corannulene can be synthesized in the gas phase through reactions mimicking conditions in carbon-rich circumstellar envelopes. Read more »
A 1-Atom-Deep Look at a Water-Splitting Catalyst
X-ray experiments revealed an unexpected transformation in a single atomic layer of a material that contributed to a doubling in the speed of a chemical reaction—the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. This process is a first step in producing hydrogen fuel for applications such as electric vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Read more »
New Insights into Lithium-Metal Surface Reactions for Next-Generation Batteries
In this work, researchers studied how CO2 gas modifies the chemical composition of lithium-metal surfaces. A better understanding of the interactions between lithium and surrounding gases will help design stabilization strategies and move from lithium-ion technology to high-energy-density technologies based on lithium metal. Read more »
Increasing the Efficiency of CO Catalytic Conversion
Using a combination of tools at the ALS and other facilities, researchers probed specific mechanisms affecting the efficiency of catalysts for CO-to-CO2 conversion. The work brings us closer to the rational design of more effective catalysts for cleaning up toxic CO exhaust and advances our understanding of fundamental catalytic reactions. Read more »