Best Talk award for HI ERN researcher at Microscience Microscopy Congress 2023
Manchester (UK), 6 July 2023 - At the Microscience Microscopy Congress 2023 in Manchester, UK, doctoral candidate Andreas Körner was honored with a best presentation award.
Target of this was to raise awareness for the impact ionizing irradiation such as X-rays (spectroscopy) and electrons (electron microscopy) has when investigating liquid samples. High energy radiation allows to see nanostructures, but also introduces new side-effects, especially when investigating fluids. As presented by Andreas Körner, this alters the redox chemistry and especially the acidity of the solution under investigation.
As a consequence, pH becomes insufficient to describe the situation, because irradiation decouples the concentrations of H+ and OH-. To overcome this obstacle, the concept of radiolytic acidity (π*) was introduced. Albeit being fundamental considerations, these findings have immediate impact on the interpretation and design of catalyst studies with advanced operando techniques such as near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (NEXAFS) or liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy (LP-TEM).
The talk was upgraded from a 3-minute poster pitch to a full-length 15-minute talk on-site and rose interest across the disciplines present at the conference. The content of this talk was recently published open access in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.
Furthermore, the new concept for describing the acidity of irradiated solutions was already verified within the framework of a second, experimental study, recently published open access in Advanced Science.
Andreas Körner studied Nanoscience in Kassel. After detours in semiconductor optics and laboratory astrophysics he joined HI ERN in November 2021, doing research in the Electrocatalysis department in the team "Nanoanalysis of Electrochemical Processes". The focus of his work is on liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy (LP-TEM) aiming to combine the possibility to observe nanostructures with electrochemistry. This allows to understand unseen processes in electrolyzers and fuel cells, which will power our green future.
Related Publications
Tailoring the Acidity of Liquid Media with Ionizing Radiation: Rethinking the Acid–Base Correlation beyond pH
Birk Fritsch, Andreas Körner, Thaïs Couasnon, Roberts Blukis, Mehran Taherkhani, Liane G. Benning, Michael P. M. Jank, Erdmann Spiecker, and Andreas Hutzler
The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 2023 14 (20), 4644-4651
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.3c00593
Goethite Mineral Dissolution to Probe the Chemistry of Radiolytic Water in Liquid-Phase Transmission Electron Microscopy
Couasnon, T., Fritsch, B., Jank, M. P. M., Blukis, R., Hutzler, A., Benning, L. G., Adv. Sci. 2023, 2301904.
DOI: 10.1002/advs.202301904
