Imaging Solid-Liquid Interfaces - from Structure to Reactivity

Abstract: Reactions between solids and liquids are critical in many aspects of the use and generation of energy, and in the nature and disposition of the associated by-products.  Such reactions remain, however, poorly understood within the "inner-space" at a solid-liquid interface that is obscured by the presence of the liquid, masking the relevant structure-property relationships. The availability of high-brilliance hard X-ray sources over the past two decades has revolutionized our ability to probe - and ultimately image - the molecular-scale structures and reactions at these interfaces. Examples to be presented include the ordering of "interfacial water", adsorption and organization of ions at charged solid-liquid interfaces (e.g., in aqueous and non-aqueous electrolytes), as well as the ability to use interfaces to control and guide reactions at the electrode-electrolyte interface in model lithium ion battery electrodes.
  
*This work is supported by the Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences.

Bio: Paul Fenter is the Director of the Center for Electrochemical Energy Science, a DOE-funded Energy Frontier Research Center that seeks to develop a fundamental understanding of the complex reactivity in lithium ion battery systems. He is also a Senior Physicist and Group Leader for Interfacial Processes in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division. Dr. Fenter joined Argonne in 1997 as a Physicist after earning his PhD in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania and postdoctoral studies at Princeton University. His research explores the structure and reactivity of solid-liquid interfaces in  a range of systems (geochemistry, batteries, supercapacitors) using novel synchrotron X-ray scattering techniques. Dr. Fenter is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the winner of the 2012 Bertram E. Warren Diffraction Physics Award from the American Crystallographic Association.

All seminars are held on Wednesdays from 12:00 noon-1:00 p.m. in the Bowen Hall Auditorium Room 222. A light lunch is provided at 11:30 a.m. in the Bowen Hall Atrium immediately prior to the seminar.