To access the very early stages of nucleation and growth of nanoparticles in liquid media, we have developed a novel setup, where the reactants pushed by high power syringe pumps through a Y-shaped micromixer are immediately liberated as a free jet. With synchrotron X-ray scattering, this provides access to chemical reaction times as short as 10 µs. Diffraction data with CdS as a prototype...
Magnetoelectric (ME) multiferroics are compounds which exhibit simultaneous magnetic ordering (MO) and electric polarization (EP) which are coupled. This coupling is utilized in applications such as MRAMs, sensors and capacitors. The ME effect is significant, if the emerging EP is of spin origin and the coupling is strong. However the emergence of EP and the coupling mechanism between these...
KLaTiO4 is a n=1 Ruddlesden-Popper type layered perovskite. KLaTiO4 can be used as a Hydrogen Evolution Catalyst (HEC), producing 9.540 μmol of H2 gas per hour from 20 mg of catalyst, when using methanol as sacrificial electron donor and platinum co-catalyst. The main disadvantage of KLaTiO4 is its high bandgap of 4.09 eV, above the visible light region, and therefore a poor choice for a HEC...
Liquid crystals (LCs) are materials with properties typically associated with both solids and melts. These systems possess both the structural order of crystals and the flow properties of liquids. One family of LC is the lyotropic LCs, which are formed by mixing otherwise immiscible solvents, usually with some molecularly anisotropic substance, such as a surfactant. Such systems can form a...
Laue diffraction at steady-state neutron sources has been reborn thanks largely to the success of X-ray Laue diffraction for protein crystallography at synchrotrons and to the development of efficient large-area neutron-sensitive image-plate detectors. The Laue technique with thermal neutrons is especially successful for crystallography on single crystals with volume typically 0.1...
Zinc-air battery with near-neutral aqueous chloride electrolytes has received increasing attentions in high power applications recently. Unwanted precipitation of zinc hydroxide chloride products reduces the battery capacity and lifetime. One of these precipitation phases has unknown crystal structure. The diffraction pattern of a synthesised phase was collected on the Australia Synchrotron...
Lithium-ion batteries have revolutionized our lives and they, in conjunction with alternative battery chemistries such as sodium-ion batteries, are going to shape our lives in the near-future. Electrodes account for a significant proportion of battery function, where atomic-scale perturbations or changes in the crystal structure during an electrochemical process permit the reversible...
