2025 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit

Symposium CH04-Multimodal Operando/In Situ Characterizations of Dynamic Energy Materials

Energy materials are at the center of renewable energy technologies for enhancing energy efficiency, reducing carbon emission and increasing global energy needs in a sustainable and environmentally responsible way. One significant challenge facing developing energy materials is to directly resolve the complex structures of energy materials and capture real-time movies of reaction dynamics under operating conditions, which calls for the development of multimodal operando/in situ methods. In this symposium, we propose to present the latest development in multimodal operando/in situ methods with an emphasis on scanning/transmission electron microscopy (S/TEM) and synchrotron based X-ray methods to resolve reaction dynamics of energy materials across multiple spatiotemporal scales. Operando/in situ S/TEM provides atomic/nm-scale time-resolved information of individual particles, while correlative synchrotron based X-ray methods offer statistical analysis of a large ensemble of materials. We will focus on energy materials that have the potential to revolutionize energy industry, such as electrocatalysts for carbon dioxide reduction, hydrogen fuel cells, water electrolysis based hydrogen production, thermal catalysts for chemical industry, advanced rechargeable batteries among other energy applications.

This symposium will present the development of operando/in situ S/TEM under a wide range of environmental stimuli (electrical/electrochemical bias, light or temperature in liquid or gas environments). Particular attentions will be paid to advances in electron detectors for low-dose imaging, 4D-STEM diffraction, correlative cryogenic TEM studies and automated data processes driven by artificial intelligence (AI) based machine learning. Operando/in situ synchrotron based X-ray methods will include both hard and soft X-ray spectroscopy, resonant X-ray scattering and surface-sensitive X-ray diffraction techniques. In addition, we plan to cover correlative TEM and X-ray studies with optical microscopy, vibrational spectroscopy, scanning probe microscopy (e.g. STM, AFM) and scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) in order to bridge the knowledge gap among various techniques across multiple spatial and temporal scales. This symposium emphasizes the need to calibrate and benchmark performance of energy materials and catalysts in confined liquid/gas environments with minimal beam-induced damage. We anticipate this symposium will stimulate a great adoption of advanced operando methods by the general energy materials community.

Topics will include:

  • Synthesis and performance of energy materials in decarbonizing energy landscape
  • Operando/in situ liquid-cell TEM during (electro)chemical reactions for catalysts and batteries
  • Operando/in situ TEM with controlled gas environment, temperature, or light illumination
  • Emergent in situ TEM techniques based on 4D-STEM, ptychography, and electron tomography
  • Operando/in situ synchrotron based X-ray methods and multimodal studies
  • Correlative studies with other operando/in situ methods (optical microscopy, vibrational spectroscopy, scanning probe microscopy and scanning electrochemical microscopy)
  • Advanced method development on new hardware, data science, and modeling

Invited Speakers:

  • Damien Alloyeau (Université Paris-Cité, France)
  • See Wee Chee (Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Germany)
  • Hao Ming Chen (National Taiwan University, Taiwan)
  • Zhu Chen (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA)
  • Miaofang Chi (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA)
  • William Chueh (Stanford University, USA)
  • Yi Cui (Stanford University, USA)
  • James De Yoreo (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA)
  • Liza-Anastasia DiCecco (University of Waterloo, Canada)
  • Jennifer Dionne (Stanford University, USA)
  • Nathan Gianneschi (Northwestern University, USA)
  • Yimo Han (Rice University, USA)
  • Qian He (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
  • Katherine Jungjohann (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, USA)
  • Yuzhang Li (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
  • Ruoqian Lin (University of California, Irvine, USA)
  • Lauren Marbella (Columbia University, USA)
  • Joseph Patterson (University of California, Irvine, USA)
  • Eric A. Stach (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
  • Vasiliki Tileli (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)
  • Michael Toney (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)
  • Raymond Unocic (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA)
  • Chongmin Wang (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA)
  • Haotian Wang (Rice University, USA)
  • Hanglong Wu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
  • David Yang (National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA)
  • Judith Yang (University of Pittsburgh, USA)
  • Peidong Yang (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
  • Wanli Yang (Advanced Light Source, USA)
  • Hua Zhou (Argonne National Laboratory, USA)

Symposium Organizers

Yao Yang
Cornell University
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
USA

Qian Chen
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Materials Science and Engineering
USA

Dongsheng Li
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
USA

Jungwon Park
Seoul National University
School of Chemical and Biological Engineering
Republic of Korea

Topics

catalytic electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) energy generation energy storage extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) in situ operando scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) transmission electron microscopy (TEM) x-ray fluorescence