FLASH News Archive 2023

Molecular movie of gold nanoparticle oscillations driven by displaced electrons

 Photocatalysis, sensors, solar cells: Plasmons promise a variety of applications if the processes triggered by optical excitation in the nanoparticles can be controlled. A research team from Hamburg and Berlin reports experimental observations of a so-called molecular movie that cannot be explained by established models in Nano Letters. The team including researchers from DESY provides a new theoretical model that explains the dynamics of excited gold ...

Physics research cooperation from Kiel, Göttingen and Hamburg creates new state of matter

 Water flows, ice is rigid – this clear difference between the liquid and solid state of substances is part of our everyday experience. It follows from the very regular arrangement of atoms and molecules in crystalline solids which is lost when they melt. Less clear, however, is the structure of “liquid crystals“ – highly interesting states that combine order and disorder in such a way that important applications such as LCDs (liquid crystal ...

Dynamics of water molecules on a titanium dioxide surface

 Efficient photocatalysts for solar-driven water splitting are very important for the green hydrogen-based economy. A full understanding of light-induced processes on the semiconductor photocatalysts in the presence of water molecules is therefore very relevant. An international team led by Heshmat Noei from the DESY NanoLab investigated the initial step of the complex reaction between water and a titanium dioxide (TiO2) surface. This promising ...

High-efficiency water splitting process revealed

 Experiments at DESY’s light sources PETRA III and FLASH have revealed the complex mode of action behind the artificial splitting of water at its most efficient level. Using X-rays, a team led by DESY leading scientist Simone Techert managed to observe the interaction of water with a perovskite, a class of mineral that is of interest in many new materials and that is well-known as a catalyst for the breaking apart of water molecules into constituent ...

Great interest in the DESY and European XFEL Users' Meeting in Hamburg

 “Finally meeting in-person again!” This was one of the catchphrases on the DESY campus at this year’s meeting of scientists conducting research at the European XFEL or the DESY light sources FLASH and PETRA III. After the meetings in the last two years took place in a purely virtual form due to the COVID pandemic, the Users' Meeting 2023 was a “real” one again on the campus. For almost a week (23-27 January) more than 1100 researchers from over ...

New AI-based software helps to interpret complex data from FLASH

 Experimental data is often not only highly dimensional but also noisy and full of artefacts which makes it difficult to interpret them. Now a team from Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), together with scientists from DESY, University of Potsdam and University of Kassel, has designed software and tested it at FLASH. This software uses self-learning neural networks to compress the data in a smart way and reconstruct a low-noise version in the next step. It ...