Invited Paper MM+AS+NS+PC+SS-MoA1
Bridging the Material and Pressure Gap in Synchrotron based Photoelectron in Situ/Operando Studies

Monday, October 22, 2018, 1:20 pm, Room 202B

Modelling the real behavior of technologically relevant materials at typical laboratory environmental conditions is a longstanding challenge. Not only classical pressure conditions are generally far from usual industrial environments (pressure gap) but also heterogeneous materials are very different from those often used to simplify the modelling strategies (material gap). For instance to monitor in-situ/operando the lateral distribution of the chemical state of surfaces and interfaces during a catalytic or electrochemical reaction at sub-micron level at environmental conditions as close as possible to the operational ones is of crucial importance to shed light on the running processes. But the possibility to investigate chemical reactions with X-ray photoelectron spectro-microscopies by overcoming material and pressure gaps is still a challenge also for modern experimental setups.

The Escamicroscopy team of Elettra which operates a Scanning Photoemission Microscope (SPEM) has recently developed novel concepts for a new generation of SPEM working under more realistic pressure conditions. The graphene sealed cells, combined for the first time with XPS by A. Kolmakov [1], allow the possibility to investigate systems which require an ambient pressure regime (e.g. liquid/solid interfaces). Despite the huge ongoing progress in the development and performance of these cells several crucial issues are unsolved and will be addressed by this presentation.