Stimuli induced transformations of confined matter

EN

SITCOM

The control of the transformations of confined soft and hard matter, upon embedding in nanoporous media, through external stimuli such as temperature, electric fields and light plays an increasingly important role in the fundamental condensed-matter and applied materials sciences. Besides hydrogen production, the surplus electric and solar power can be used to develop power-to-X and solar-to-X approaches to manipulate matter for the development of devices (e.g. heterogeneous catalysts, actuators, sensors) that adapt their structure and function to changes in their environment. To achieve this, clear understanding of the structural modifications of matter in confinement and thus in interface-dominated geometries needs to be reached. The proposed project intends to investigate transformations at the nanoscale of guest species and of respective hosting matrices (e.g. ionic segregations, phase transitions) driven by external stimuli such as temperature, light and electric fields combining anomalous small and wide angle X-ray scattering (ASAXS/AWAXS) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) at the P62 beamline of PETRA III. For this purpose, a dedicated sample environment will be developed integrating three sample cells for powder and monolithic samples conditioned at different temperatures (up to 1000 °C), gas atmospheres, electric potentials and UV-visible light exposure. Therefore, aside from the in situ study of stimuli-induced transformations, the planned infrastructure suits well to perform also operando experiments ideal for catalysis, energy storage applications and for functional materials with integrated switchable effective properties, e.g. switchable light absorption or color.