Events

Date: 19 February 2025   Time: 14:00 - 15:00

Location: Engineering 2.09

Fast Electrons and Hard X-rays for Unraveling Atomic-Scale Dynamics in Light-Energy Conversion

Prof. Dr. Renske M. van der Veen

Helmholtz Centre Berlin for Materials and Energy Germany

Technical University of Berlin, Germany

The increasing demand for renewable and low-cost energy motivates intensive research aimed at characterizing and optimizing materials that can efficiently convert (sun) light into usable energy in the form of electricity or chemical fuels. Conventional characterization techniques either lack the spatial resolution necessary to resolve individual atoms, or they lack the temporal resolution required to capture structural rearrangements as they evolve. Our group develops complementary X-ray and electron-based tools to visualize light-induced processes in materials on atomic length and time scales. In this talk I will introduce you to the techniques of ultrafast/time-resolved X-ray spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy and provide several examples of how these techniques can be used in the fields of solar energy and catalysis.

Renske M. van der Veen obtained her PhD degree in 2010 from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, in the field of ultrafast x-ray spectroscopy. She became a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology, working on ultrafast electron microscopy and spectroscopy, after which she was a project group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Germany, from 2013 to 2015. She joined the faculty in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an assistant professor in 2015. Since 2021 she is a department head at the Helmholtz Centre Berlin for Energy and Materials. Her current research focuses on unraveling solar-energy conversion pathways relevant for photovoltaics and photocatalysis.