Publication date: 15th December 2025
The Energy Materials In-situ Laboratory (EMIL) is a unique infrastructure at the synchrotron light source BESSY II in Berlin that focuses on the study of innovative materials for energy conversion, efficiency, and storage by combining sample production facilities and various spectroscopic techniques. Among the endstations is a Scanning Transmission X-ray Microscope (STXM) specialized in materials research for energy conversion and storage (MYSTIIC - Microscope for X-raY Scanning Transmission In-situ Imaging of Catalysts). It is installed at the soft EMIL beamline (undulator UE48) allowing imaging in the energy range from 250 eV to 2000 eV. A Fresnel zone plate is used to focus and illuminate the sample with coherent monochromatic X-rays. An order sorting aperture eliminates all but the first diffraction order. By scanning the sample in the focal plane, elemental and chemically sensitive imaging can be achieved using NEXAFS as contrast mechanism with spatial resolutions down to below 20 nm. A special feature includes the compatibility of MYSTIIC and TEM sample holders so that identical samples can be investigated using a correlative approach.
Key feature of MYSTIIC is the sample environment especially designed for energy materials research with relevance to energy conversion and storage. Dedicated sample holders allow measurements at high temperatures (up to 1000 ºC), at high gas pressures up to 1 bar, in liquids and under applied electrical potential in liquid electrolytes for electrochemical studies. Materials systems that have been studied so far include thin film catalysts, battery particles or 2D materials such as MXenes (a new class of 2D inorganic compounds that consist of atomically thin layers of transition metal carbides, nitrides, or carbonitrides). MXenes can be a pseudocapacitive material used for the electrodes of a supercapacitor or novel electrode materials in sodium-ion batteries. Various MXenes including Ti3C2Tx, Mo2C2Tx and V2CTx (T: -OH, -O, -F) have been investigated interacting with various electrolytes. Cu/ZnO-based catalysts used for methanol production by hydrogenation of CO and CO₂ utilizing the synergy of Cu and Zn in these material and sodium-rich 4d-transition metal sulfide compounds as promising cathode materials in sodium-ion batteries have been studied as well.
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