AVS 62nd International Symposium & Exhibition
    In-Situ Spectroscopy and Microscopy Focus Topic Monday Sessions
       Session IS+AS+SA+SS-MoA

Invited Paper IS+AS+SA+SS-MoA1
In situ Electron Spectroscopy for Energy Science

Monday, October 19, 2015, 2:20 pm, Room 211C

Session: Ambient Pressure X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy Studies for Catalytic and Energy Materials in Gas Phase
Presenter: Robert Schlögl, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Germany
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The use of volatile renewable electricity in lager amounts in our energy systems requires grid-scale technologies for integration electricity in material energy carrier streams. Several systemic options always suffer from our conceptual weakness to convert free electrons in chemical bonds. This can be achieved with accumulators for limited applications and should be done through water splitting and synthesis of solar fuels in almost unlimited applications. Complex interfacial chemistry is the underlying scientific challenge. To tackle this old challenge with new concepts it is essential to improve our ability to study chemical, electronic and geometric structures of nanoscopic objects in-situ meaning under operation conditions. A whole train of dedicated instrumentation from specimen formation, data acquisition and auxiliary analyses plus sample manipulation is necessary for this task. The presentation gives some aspects of priority challenges and uses examples of operation studies of water splitting catalysts and of CO2 reduction systems to illustrate the present status of insight. In the outlook the possibilities of the novel experiment EMIL at BESSY will be discussed.