Interfaces for battery and solar cell applications – atomic level understanding using X-ray based Spectroscopy

Professor Håkan Rensmo
Uppsala University
Uppsala, Sweden

Tuesday, September 19 at 3:00pm in VW104

New materials and material combinations for the use in solar cells and Li-ion batteries has been subject of substantial academic and commercial research over the last decades. The efficiency of the conversion process in these systems is largely dependent on the properties of the interfacial region including material organisation as well as the energy matching between the different condensed phases including inorganic materials, molecular materials and electrolytes. Insight into the material organisation and electronic structure is therefore crucial in order to understand and optimize the function. X-ray based techniques such as photoelectron spectroscopy (PES) are powerful for obtaining such information at an atomic level due to the possibility for element specificity. This presentation discusses how synchrotron based PES can be used for understanding energy related materials and the interactions between them with.

SPS Sponsored research talks by three Hope students:

Friday, September 15 at 3:00pm

  • “Depolarization and Scattering Signatures of Spherical Particles”
    by Yong Chul Yoon
  • “Comparing Electrochemical Calculations and Particle Induced X-Ray Emission Measurements of Prussian Blue Analogue Deposits”
    by Scott Joffre
  • “Automated Characterization of Fluxon Electrodynamics”
    by Alexander Medema

Stories of Hope: Hope Astrophysicists

Seeing Stars

Time travel, long imagined by writers and dreamers, is not as far-fetched as you might believe. Sure, it seems fantastical and improbable — the imaginings of which are only meant for postulations and movies — but astrophysicists do it all the time.

And so did Hope College freshman Jeff Engle in the summer of 2016 at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. All it took was expensive, highly powered, one-of-a-kind stellar equipment called the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. That and funding and guidance from the Hope College physics department and Professor Dr. Peter Gonthier.

read more…

Seminar: Celebration of Undergraduate Research and Creative Performance

Hope’s Celebration of Undergraduate Research and Creative Performance is a culminating event for many students to showcase their work to students, faculty, family and community members.

Friday, April 21, 2017
Richard & Helen DeVos Fieldhouse
2:30–5 p.m.