Despite the ready tunability and industrial promise of deep eutectic solvents (DESs), there have been few x-ray spectroscopy studies at their liquid/vapor interfaces—which is relevant for their use in applications such as greenhouse-gas capture. Here, researchers probed the liquid/vapor interface of a benchmark DES using complementary spectroscopies. Read more »
Nicotine Protonation in Simulated Vaping Aerosols
To better understand how e-cigarette additives alter nicotine chemistry and users’ perceptions of vaping, researchers used x-ray spectroscopy technology at the Advanced Light Source to analyze the acid-base equilibria of additive-enhanced nicotine in simulated vaping aerosols. Read more »
Nanoscale Confinement of Photo-Injected Electrons at Hybrid Interfaces
Picosecond time-resolved x-ray photoemission spectroscopy provides real-time electron distributions of donors and acceptors in a prototypical bipyridyl-ZnO hybrid light harvesting system. The measurements show that photo-injected electrons remain localized within the defect-rich surface region of the nanoporous ZnO substrate, revealing a challenge for the extraction of free charge carriers. Read more »