Schematic of two XFELs pulses to study the chemical environment around the carbon atom in real time / A. Picón
Schematic of two XFELs pulses to study the chemical environment around the carbon atom in real time / A. Picón - An international collaboration involving the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) has succeeded in bringing X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to the femtosecond time scale. This advance, published in Nature Communications , will not only make it possible to investigate the effects on chemical bonds due to the movements of atomic nuclei, but also those caused by electronic dynamics. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), also known as electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis, is a central tool for studying the local chemical environment at the atomic level. Taking advantage of the atomic selectivity of X-rays, XPS spectroscopy has become one of the most widely used techniques for surface analysis. Most XPS measurements have had limited temporal resolution due to the characteristics of the X-ray source, where synchrotrons pushed the XPS limits into the tens of picosecond (10-12 s) regime. Now, an international collaboration with groups from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland), Argonne National Laboratory (USA) and Stanford University (USA), has succeeded in showing chemical shifts in an ultrafast XPS scheme of only a few femtoseconds (10-15 s). Such temporal resolution allows XPS spectroscopy not only to investigate the motions of the nuclei, but also to capture the electronic dynamics on their natural time scale.
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