Publications related to Design, Synthesis and Characterization of New Nanoparticle Stabilizers and Their Application in Catalysis

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

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

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

Dilution versus fractionation: Separation technologies hyphenated with spICP-MS for characterizing metallic nanoparticles in aerosols

Andrea Testino, Christian Ludwig, Jian Wang, Tianyu Cen

The presence of metal salts has become one of the major limitations for measuring metallic nanoparticles (NPs) in single particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (spICP-MS). Their presence generates a background signal in spICP-MS that can be ...

2024

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

New Applications of 1,3,2-Diazaphospholenes in Catalysis

Johannes Klett

The constant urge to construct new molecules in an economical and sustainable fashion led to the development of numerous metal-catalyzed transformations. Organocatalysts consisting of abundant and more sustainable elements offer an elegant solution to over ...

EPFL2024

Probing Catalytic Sites and Adsorbate Spillover on Ultrathin FeO2-x Film on Ir(111) during CO Oxidation

Harald Brune, Hao Yin, Wei Fang

The spatially resolved identification of active sites on the heterogeneous catalyst surface is an essential step toward directly visualizing a catalytic reaction with atomic scale. To date, ferrous centers on platinum group metals have shown promising pote ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

The simultaneous Selective Catalytic Reduction of N2O and NO over Fe-exchanged zeolites

Filippo Buttignol

Iron-exchanged zeolites are industrial heterogeneous catalysts deployed to remediate anthropogenic emissions of both nitrous oxide (N2O) and nitrogen oxides (NOx = NO + NO2). Despite the extensive scientific attention received, limited knowledge is availab ...

EPFL2024

Second harmonic scattering of nanoparticles: A journey into the electrical double layer

Bingxin Chu

In aqueous solutions, a charged surface causes the redistribution of nearby ions. The ion layers formed are known as the electrical double layer (EDL), and are widespread in many systems involving electrochemistry, colloidal science, biomedicine, and energ ...

EPFL2024

Development of Hyphenated Analytical Techniques using spICP-MS for Online Characterization of Metallic Nanoparticles in Aerosols

Tianyu Cen

The presence of metallic nanoparticles (NPs) in aerosols has raised concern about their fate in the environment through natural processes and anthropological activities. The state-of-the-art technologies for direct aerosol characterization cannot reach rea ...

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

Controlled Formation of Nanoribbons and Their Heterostructures via Assembly of Mass-Selected Inorganic Ions

Klaus Kern

Control of nanomaterial dimensions with atomic precision through synthetic methods is essential to understanding and engineering of nanomaterials. For single-layer inorganic materials, size and shape controls have been achieved by self-assembly and surface ...

Wiley-V C H Verlag Gmbh2024

Plasmonic Nanostructures for Photocatalysis: Material, Photonic and Electronic Effects

Fateme Kiani Shahvandi

Plasmonic photochemistry has a large potential to replace energy-intensive chemical processes with low-temperature, low-pressure light-driven chemical reactions. Plasmonic nanostructures have emerged as promising photocatalysts with exceptional and tunable ...

EPFL2024

Well-Defined Ti Surface Sites in Ziegler-Natta Pre-Catalysts from 47/49Ti Solid-State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

Pierrick Berruyer

Treatment of Ziegler-Natta (ZN) catalysts with BCl3 improves their activity by increasing the number of active sites. Here we show how Ti-47/49 solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy enables us to understand the electronic structure of t ...

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

Iron-carbohydrate complexes treating iron anaemia: Understanding the nano-structure and interactions with proteins through orthogonal characterisation

Antonia Neels, Tiberiu Totu, Marianne Liebi

Intravenous (IV) iron-carbohydrate complexes are widely used nanoparticles (NPs) to treat iron deficiency anaemia, often associated with medical conditions such as chronic kidney disease, heart failure and various inflammatory conditions. Even though a ple ...

Elsevier2024

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

In vivo polydopamine coating of Rhodobacter sphaeroides for enhanced electron transfer

Fabian Fischer, Ardemis Anoush Boghossian, Melania Reggente

Recent advances in coupling light-harvesting microorganisms with electronic components have led to a new generation of biohybrid devices based on microbial photocatalysts. These devices are limited by the poorly conductive interface between phototrophs and ...

2024

Ion Spectroscopy Reveals Structural Difference for Proteins Microhydrated by Retention and Condensation of Water

Oleg Boyarkine, Andrei Zviagin

Protein ubiquitin in its +7 charge state microhydrated by 5 and 10 water molecules has been interrogated in the gas phase by cold ion UV/IR spectroscopy. The complexes were formed either by condensing water onto the unfolded bare proteins in a temperature- ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

Development of Sustainable Carbohydrate-Based Solvents by Acetal Functionalisation of Biomass

Anastasiia Komarova

Organic solvents are ubiquitous in industrial and domestic applications from the production of pharmaceuticals to household consumer products. The negative impact of most traditional solvents, especially aprotic types, on the environment, health, and safet ...

EPFL2024