To reveal the structure and even more important, the structure-function correlation of materials are essential prerequisites to the optimization and rational design of materials in energy storage and conversion applications. The complex processes resulting in the function typically involve not only the initial chemical reaction but a wide range of reorganizations, phase transitions, and transport phenomena which finally determine the efficiency of the material and its reliability in applications. The characterization challenge of visualizing changes on multiple length scales of ordered and disordered materials is one aspect of the characterization problem; to correlate the identified changes with the function of the material and distinguish the essential changes from other non-correlated alternation is the second equally important task.

In the talk we will show on various examples from the field of fuel cells and batteries, how high throughput hard X-ray spectroscopy can be combined with data analytics and theory to reveal the atomic structure of the ordered and disordered materials. In a next step a true imaging tool like transmission electron microscopy is used to verify this structure. The high throughput aspect of this approach provides not only a new opportunity to use database approaches to guarantee an unbiased method for the structure identification and optimization with a “field of view” in the nanometer range but also provides a new strategy to use data analytics, especially data mining approaches, to establish the structure-function correlation. The combination of ex-situ and operando experiments provides a statistical relevant data quantity and a diversity of the data necessary to this approach and is minimizing at the same time challenges caused by sample damage.

Soft X-ray spectroscopy (∼50-1500eV), including both X-ray absorption and emission, is a powerful tool to study the electronic structure of various energy materials. Its energy range covers the K-edge of low-Z elements (e.g. C, N, O and F) and the L-edge of transition metal. Important information such as chemical valence, charge transfer and different ligand field could be directly extracted from the spectra. However, its application has been largely limited in materials that could be placed in vacuum (such as solid, below-ambient-pressure gas and liquid) because of the short penetration depth of soft x-ray. In this presentation, I will talk about the recent development of soft x-ray spectroscopy for high pressure liquid(up to 400 bars) at Advanced Light Source in Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

Nonvolatile memories play an increasing role in modern nanoelectronics. Among the various storage concepts, resistive switching promises a high scalability. In oxides, the physical mechanism behind resistive switching involves electrically controlled local redox processes, which result in the formation and migration of oxygen vacancies. We studied these redox processes and their influence on the resistive switching in the model systems SrTiO₃(STO) and ZrO₂with a full suite of synchrotron-radiation based spectroscopy techniques. The resistive switching in STO proceeds via the growth of nanoscale conductive filaments, which poses considerable challenges to the spectroscopic characterization. Employing nanospectroscopy in an operando configuration we could unanimously relate the conductivity changes between the ON (low resistance) and OFF states (high resistance) to the redox-induced changes of the valencies and the formation of oxygen vacancies [1,2]. The retention time of the ON state in STO is determined by a reoxidation of the previously oxygen-deficient region and can be controlled by inserting an oxygen diffusion barrier. With respect to the reproducibility of the switching process, we find that the individual switching event is governed by a competition within a network of subfilaments, which has been created in the initial forming step. Upon resistive switching, one of these subfilaments becomes the current-carrying filament. However, during repeated switching the different subfilaments may become active, resulting in a cycle-to-cycle variation of the location and shape of the current-carrying filament, which determines the low-resistance state [3].

[1] C. Baeumer, C. Schmitz, A. Marchewka, D. N. Mueller, R. Valenta, J. Hackl, N. Raab, S. P. Rogers, M. I. Khan, S. Nemsak, M. Shim, S. Menzel, C. M. Schneider, R. Waser and R. Dittmann, Nat Commun 7 (2016) 12398.

[2] A. Kindsmüller, C. Schmitz, C. Wiemann, K. Skaja, D. J. Wouters, R. Waser, C. M. Schneider and R. Dittmann, APL Materials 6 (2018) 046106.

[3] C. Baeumer, R. Valenta, C. Schmitz, A. Locatelli, T. O. Mentes, S. P. Rogers, A. Sala, N. Raab, S. Nemsak, M. Shim, C. M. Schneider, S. Menzel, R. Waser and R. Dittmann, ACS Nano 11 (2017) 692.

The electronic structure of matter is critical information that determine its electric, magnetic and optical properties. The precise understanding of such information will not only help understand the rich properties and physical phenomena of quantum materials, but also guide the design of their potential applications.

Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) is an effective method in determining the electronic structures of materials: with its energy and momentum resolution, ARPES can directly map out dispersions of electronic bands in the reciprocal space with critical parameters (such as the energy gap and width of bands, carrier type, density and the Fermi-velocity, etc.).

In this talk, I will first give a brief introduction to this powerful experimental technique, its basic principle and the rich information it can yield by using synchrotron radiation light source, then focus on its recent application to topological quantum materials (including some of our works on topological insulators, Dirac and Weyl semimetals [1]). Finally, I will review the recent development in ARPES and give a perspective on its future directions and applications.

Today, one of the materials science goals is the production of novel materials with specific and controlled properties. Material composites, which combine different materials, with specific and defined properties, mostly of multilayer thin films, are a promising way to create products with specific properties, and, in general different of those of the constituents. The chemical, mechanical, electric and magnetic properties of such materials are often intimately related to their structure, composition profile and morphology. Thus, it is crucial to yield with an experimental set-up capable to investigate different aspects related with the electronic and geometric structure under identical experimental conditions, and, in particular, to differentiate between surface and bulk properties. There are few techniques able to provide an accurate insight of what is happening at these interfaces, which in general are buried by several tens of nanometres inside the material. The Spline beamline Branch B at the ESRF, the European Synchrotron, offers unique capabilities in this respect.

In this contribution we will present the study of the electronic structure of well-characterized epitaxial films of FeO (wustite), γ-Fe₂O₃ (maghemite) and Fe₃O₄ (magnetite) using Hard X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (HAXPES), X-ray Absorption Near Edge spectroscopy (XANES) and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS). We carry out HAXPES with incident photon energies of 12 and 15 keV in order to probe the bulk-sensitive Fe 1s and Fe 2p core level spectra. Fe K-edge XANES is used to characterize and confirm the Fe valence states of FeO, γ-Fe₂O₃ and Fe₃O₄ films. EELS is used to identify the bulk plasmon loss features. A comparison of the HAXPES results with model calculations for an MO6 cluster provides us with microscopic electronic structure parameters such as the on-site Coulomb energy U_dd, the charge-transfer energy Δ, and the metal-ligand hybridization strength V. The results also provide estimates for the ground state and final state contributions in terms of the dⁿ, dⁿ⁺¹L1 and dⁿ⁺²L2 configurations. Both FeO and γ-Fe2O3 can be described as charge-transfer insulators in the Zaanen-Sawatzky-Allen picture with U_dd > Δ, consistent with earlier works. However, the MO6 cluster calculations do not reproduce an extra satellite observed in Fe 1s spectra of γ-Fe₂O₃ and Fe₃O₄. Based on simplified calculations using an M2O7 cluster with renormalized parameters, it is suggested that non-local screening plays an important role in explaining the two satellites observed in the Fe 1s core level HAXPES spectra of γ-Fe₂O₃ and Fe₃O₄.

Radiographic imaging using a series of single pulses from synchrotron storage rings or x-ray free-electron lasers gives new insight into dynamic phenomena. One limitation of these sources is that the native and natural beam size at most end-station hutches is, at best, of mm-scale dimensions. Here, we describe a method for collecting full-field, radiographic images of cm-scale phenomena using focused pink-beam and scattering the x-rays, effectively creating point-source images. Although currently photon starved and highly dependent on parameters chosen (such as source-to-object and source-to-detector distances, scattering material, etc.) we are continuously improving the technique. At the Dynamic Compression Sector at the Advanced Photon Source, we use this capability to image detonation phenomena, particularly direct imaging of detonator performance, imaging initiation and run-up to detonation, imaging differences in ideal vs. non-ideal explosives, and have a goal to determining density during detonation at 10’s of microns in resolution. In this presentation, we summarize our progress developing and using this technique in creating movies of dynamic phenomena as fast as 153.4 ns between frames, and as a method for imaging samples prior to, for example, collecting dynamic small-angle x-ray scattering or diffraction to observe nanodiamond growth kinetics and composition evolution during detonation.