Joint Chemistry/Physics Seminar: Integrated Imaging of Interfaces for Energy Transduction Processes

Sustainable energy is one of the greatest challenges facing our planet this century. Interfaces are key to the realization of high-performance optoelectronics, batteries, and catalysts that are promising for sustainable energy. In order to shape our sustainable energy future, innovative research must be undertaken to understand interfaces at the atomic level. In situ characterization of solid/solid, solid/liquid, solid/gas interface reactions at atomic scale under realistic working conditions becomes truly ambitious. This may be realized through utilizing a multifunctional nanofluidic device, cross transmission electron microscopy, X-ray microscopy and spectroscopy platforms. To accomplish this, interfaces were characterized with preserved nature under various electrical biasing, light, pressure and temperature conditions. This approach, referred to as “Integrated Imaging”, establishes an entirely new platform to understand interfaces, which provides design strategies for new materials and devices that may frame the next generation’s sustainable energy.