Publications related to Extracellular bacterial inactivation proceeding without Cu-ion release: Drastic effects of the applied plasma energy on the performance of the Cu-polyester (PES) samples

Polydopamine-coated photoautotrophic bacteria for improving extracellular electron transfer in living photovoltaics

Fabian Fischer, Ardemis Anoush Boghossian, Charlotte Elisabeth Marie Roullier, Melania Reggente, Mohammed Mouhib, Patricia Brandl, Hanxuan Wang

Living photovoltaics are microbial electrochemical devices that use whole cell–electrode interactions to convert solar energy to electricity. The bottleneck in these technologies is the limited electron transfer between the microbe and the electrode surfac ...

2024

Mapping orthorhombic domains with geometrical phase analysis in rare-earth nickelate heterostructures

Jean-Marc Triscone, Duncan Thomas Lindsay Alexander, Bernat Mundet

Most perovskite oxides belong to the Pbnm space group, composed of an anisotropic unit cell, A-site antipolar displacements, and oxygen octahedral tilts. Mapping the orientation of the orthorhombic unit cell in epitaxial heterostructures that consist of at ...

Aip Publishing2024

Microsecond Time-Resolved Cryo-Electron Microscopy

Oliver Florian Harder

Recently, single-particle cryo-electron microscopy emerged as a technique capable of determining protein structures at near-atomic resolution and resolving protein dynamics with a temporal resolution ranging from second to milliseconds. This thesis describ ...

EPFL2024

Microstructure - Electrochemical Surface Reactivity Relationship of Electrochemically Grown Manganese Oxides Films

Roberto Cestaro

This Thesis provides a comprehensive and correlative investigation of the microstructure, chemical state, and electrochemical reactivity of manganese oxide (MnOx) films, aiming to gain a deeper understanding of the deposition and dissolution mechanism of M ...

EPFL2024

A compact approach to higher-resolution resonant inelastic x-ray scattering detection using photoelectrons

Henrik Moodysson Rønnow, Markus Scholz

The detection of inelastically scattered soft x-rays with high energy resolution usually requires large grating spectrometers. Recently, photoelectron spectrometry for analysis of x-rays (PAX) has been rediscovered for modern spectroscopy experiments at sy ...

Iop Publishing Ltd2024

Solution-based Cu+ transient species mediate the reconstruction of copper electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction

Raffaella Buonsanti, Anna Loiudice, Jan Vávra, Petru Pasquale Albertini, Gaétan Philippe Louis Ramona

Understanding metal surface reconstruction is of the utmost importance in electrocatalysis, as this phenomenon directly affects the nature of available active sites. However, its dynamic nature renders surface reconstruction notoriously difficult to study. ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Process-Induced Structures of Injection-Molded High-Density Polyethylene-Combining X-ray Scattering and Finite Element Modeling

Marianne Liebi, Manuel Guizar Sicairos

The success of plastics heavily relies on fast melt processing methods used for large-scale industrial manufacturing, including injection molding. The hierarchical structure of the solid polymer depends on material selection combined with processing condit ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

Structural study of nickelate based heterostructures

Jean-Marc Triscone, Duncan Thomas Lindsay Alexander, Bernat Mundet, Chih-Ying Hsu

Heterostructures consisting of SmNiO3 and NdNiO3 alternating layers with additional LaAlO3 spacer layers were grown and fully characterized by means of x-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, and scanning transmission electron microscopy. A change in t ...

Aip Publishing2024

Controlling crystal cleavage in focused ion beam shaped specimens for surface spectroscopy

Philip Johannes Walter Moll, Matthias Carsten Putzke, Andrew Scott Hunter

Our understanding of quantum materials is commonly based on precise determinations of their electronic spectrum by spectroscopic means, most notably angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and scanning tunneling microscopy. Both require atomicall ...

Aip Publishing2024

Extensions of Peer Prediction Incentive Mechanisms

Adam Julian Richardson

As large, data-driven artificial intelligence models become ubiquitous, guaranteeing high data quality is imperative for constructing models. Crowdsourcing, community sensing, and data filtering have long been the standard approaches to guaranteeing or imp ...

EPFL2024

Optimizing Atomic Layer Deposition Processes with Nanowire-Assisted TEM Analysis

Johann Michler, Ivo Utke, Xavier Maeder

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is one of the premier methods to synthesize ultra-thin materials on complex surfaces. The technique allows for precise control of the thickness down to single atomic layers, while at the same time providing uniform coverage ev ...

Wiley2024

Composition and Element Distribution Mapping of γ′ and γ" Phases of Inconel 718 by High-Resolution Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy and X-ray Energy-Dispersive Spectrometry

Philippe Buffat

The main strengthening mechanism for Inconel 718 (IN718), a Ni-based superalloy, is precipitation hardening by gamma ' and gamma '' particles. It is thus essential, for good alloy performance, that precipitates with the desired chemical composition have ad ...

MDPI2024

Electron-beam based nanoscale quantum controls

Hoda Shirzad

Advancing quantum technologies depends on the precise control of individual quantum systems, the so-called qubits, and the exploitation of their quantum properties. Nowadays, expanding the number of qubits to be entangled is at the core of the developments ...

EPFL2024

Measuring electrical properties in semiconductor devices by pixelated STEM and off-axis electron holography (or convergent beams vs. plane waves)

Victor Carle Adrien Boureau

We demonstrate the use of both pixelated differential phase contrast (DPC) scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and off-axis electron holography (EH) for the measurement of electric fields and assess the advantages and limitations of each techn ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Revealing the Mechanism Underlying 3D-AFM Imaging of Suspended Structures by Experiments and Simulations

Marcos Penedo Garcia

The invention of 3D atomic force microscopy (3D-AFM) has enabled visualizing subnanoscale 3D hydration structures. Meanwhile, its applications to imaging flexible molecular chains have started to be experimentally explored. However, the validity and princi ...

Wiley-V C H Verlag Gmbh2024

A story of two transitions: From adhesive to abrasive wear and from ductile to brittle regime

Jean-François Molinari, Sacha Zenon Wattel

Atomistic simulations performed with a family of model potential with tunable hardness have proven to be a great tool for advancing the understanding of wear processes at the asperity level. They have been instrumental in finding a critical length scale, w ...

2024

Instabilities in Elastic and Magneto-Elastic Beams and Shells: from Shell Buckling to the Design of a Programmable Braille Reader

Arefeh Abbasi

In this thesis, we conduct a comprehensive investigation into structural instabilities of both elastic and magneto-elastic beams and shells, resulting in a creative proposal to design a programmable braille reader. Methodologically, we combine numerical si ...

EPFL2024

Structure-function analysis of the cyclic β-1,2-glucan synthase from Agrobacterium tumefaciens

Henning Paul-Julius Stahlberg, Dongchun Ni

The synthesis of complex sugars is a key aspect of microbial biology. Cyclic beta-1,2-glucan (C beta G) is a circular polysaccharide critical for host interactions of many bacteria, including major pathogens of humans (Brucella) and plants (Agrobacterium). ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Photogeneration of Hydrogen: Insights from a Pt(II)-Complex Incorporated into a Covalent Organic Framework

Paolo Costa, Federico De Biasi

Pt(II)-based molecular catalysts stand as a prototypical system in hydrogen evolution reactions (HER) owing to their consistently elevated activity levels. Their integration into heterogeneous systems thus provides an ideal platform to develop catalytic ma ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag2024

Quasi-operando Transmission Electron Microscopy Diagnostics for Electrocatalytic Processes in Liquids

Vasiliki Tileli

It is of great interest to the energy community to understand how the mechano-physico-chemical phenomena that eventually lead to device degradation are related to the startup, operation, and shutdown phases. For electrocatalytic systems operating in liquid ...

Swiss Chemical Soc2024