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We show that the formation of the wetting layer and the experimentally observed continuous shift of the H2O-OH balance towards molecular water at increasing coverage on a TiO2(110) surface can be rationalized on a molecular level. The…
Transition metal perovskite oxides display a variety of emergent phenomena which are tunable by tailoring the oxygen octahedral rotation. SrRuO$_3$, a ferromagnetic perovskite oxide, is well-known to have various atomic structures and…
The electrical properties of thin TiO2 films have recently been extensively exploited towards enabling a variety for metal-oxide electron devices: unipolar/bipolar semiconductor devices and/or memristors. In such efforts, investigations on…
Electrical and optical properties of amorphous vanadium oxide thin films obtained by electrochemical anodic oxidation are studied. It is shown that under cathodic polarization the hydrogen insertion into vanadium oxide from an electrolyte…
The toolbox for imaging molecules is well-equipped today. Some techniques visualize the geometrical structure, others the electron density or electron orbitals. Molecules are many-body systems for which the correlation between the…
Recently, it was established that a two-dimensional electron system can arise at the interface between two oxide insulators LaAlO3 and SrTiO3. This paradigmatic example exhibits metallic behaviour and magnetic properties between…
Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) formation rates in a proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell anode and cathode were estimated as a function of humidity and temperature by studying the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) on a rotating ring disc…
Aiming to improve fabrication protocols for boron nitride and graphene (h-BNG) lateral heterostructures, we studied the growth of h-BNG thin films on platinum and their behavior in an oxygen environment. We employed a surface science…
Experiments carried out at our laboratories have led to observing a new type of electrification, now called surface photocharging. For a consistent description, we are weighing carefully the experimental evidence against the common…
An attractive class of materials for photo(electro)chemical reactions are hybrids based on semiconducting metal oxides and nanocarbons (e.g. carbon nanotubes (CNT), graphene), where the nanocarbon acts as a highly-stable conductive scaffold…
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are a class of synthetic chemical compounds widely used as coatings to lower surface energies. Yet the microscopic mechanisms of their weak interaction with water and organic compounds remain poorly…
Advanced theoretical investigations are crucial for understanding the structural growth mechanisms, optoelectronic properties, and photocatalytic activity of photoelectrodes for efficient photoelectrochemical water splitting. In this work,…
The optical/infrared properties of films of vanadium dioxide (VO2) and vanadium sesquioxide (V2O3) have been investigated via ellipsometry and near-normal incidence reflectance measurements from far infrared to ultraviolet frequencies.…
When a three-dimensional material is constructed by stacking different two-dimensional layers into an ordered structure, new and unique physical properties can emerge. An example is the delafossite PdCoO2, which consists of alternating…
The solar water splitting process assisted by semiconductor photocatalysts attracts growing research interests worldwide for the production of hydrogen as a clean and sustainable energy carrier. Due to their optical and electrical…
We propose a systematic approach to obtain various forms of insulating titanium oxynitrides Ti$_{n}$N$_{2}$O$_{2n-3}$ and we conduct a detailed study on its $n=2$ case, Ti$_{2}$N$_{2}$O. We study the energetics and the electronic structures…
We present a highly efficient workflow for designing semiconductor structures with specific physical properties, which can be utilized for a range of applications, including photocatalytic water splitting. Our algorithm generates candidate…
We study the surface stability of the layered bismuth-oxide Bi$_2$WO$_6$ and Bi$_2$MoO$_6$ photocatalysts, which belong to the series of Aurivillius (Bi$_2$A$_{n-1}$B$_{n}$O$_{3n+3}$) perovskites and have been proposed as efficient…
The room temperature pump-probe X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) measurements used for serial femtosecond crystallography provide remarkable information about the structures of the catalytic (S-state) intermediates of the oxygen-evolution…
Using first principles calculations, we study the ground-state structure of bulk proton-exchanged lithium niobate, which is also called hydrogen niobate and is widely used in waveguides. Thermodynamics helps to establish the most favorable…