IMX Talks - Revealing the Structural and Chemical Evolution of Electrocatalysts using Correlated Operando Electron and X-ray Microscopy

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Event details

Date 28.02.2025
Hour 11:1512:15
Speaker Dr. See Wee Chee, Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Berlin, Germany
Location
Category Conferences - Seminars
Event Language English

Electrocatalysts exist within a complex reaction environment and experience (electro)chemical driving forces that can change their structure and composition from their as-synthesized state and during sustained operation. It is, therefore, crucial that we understand how the working state of the catalyst evolves under operating conditions if we are to reliably relate catalyst morphologies with their associated catalytic performance. The need to provide such insights and inform the design of catalysts for various green energy applications has driven the widespread development and adoption of operando techniques, but there remains a crucial gap in our current methods because they largely fall under two categories, broad beam spectroscopy techniques sensitive to the ensemble chemical signatures of the catalytic system or microscopic techniques capable of high spatial resolution imaging but provide limited information about the catalyst’s chemical state. In this talk, I will discuss my group’s recent work using a combination of transmission electron microscopy and transmission X-ray microscopy to investigate the structure and chemical composition of electrocatalysts under reaction conditions in a spatially and temporally resolved manner. These studies also demonstrate how X-ray spectro-microscopy experiments using the same liquid cells used for liquid phase electron microscopy can provide a vital bridge between local nanoscale phenomena and ensemble behaviour.  

Bio: See Wee Chee is the group leader for liquid phase electron microscopy in the Department of Interface Science at the Fritz Haber Institute (FHI) of the Max Planck Society. He graduated with a B.Appl.Sc. from the Materials Science department in the National University of Singapore and then, with a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research group in Berlin, Germany focuses on studying the transformations that take place in electrocatalysts under applied potential and in the electrolyte with liquid phase electron microscopy. Recently, they have also started to conduct operando microscopy experiments at the X-ray synchrotron beamlines.
 

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Practical information

  • General public
  • Free

Organizer

  • Prof. Vasiliki Tileli

Contact

  • Prof. Vasiliki Tileli

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