Nanophotonics and Surface Chemistry Oldenburg

PCAM PhD student Antonio Brancato from the group of Luisa D'Urso, University of Catania, Italy, presented his results obtained in parts during his stay in Oldenburg on the 2025 Spring Meeting of the European Materials Research Society (E-MRS, organized with the Foundation Jean-Marie Lehn in Strasbourg, France, May 26 to 30, 2025). The poster had the title: "Mechanistic study of Silver/Platinum Nanoplates synthesis and their application as reliable SERS substrate"

Imke Maack successfully defended her PhD thesis on "Formstrukturierte Gold-Platin-Nanopartikel für (photo)katalytische Anwendungen" on May 23rd. Congratulations!

Nils Brinkmann's experimental work during his PhD. thesis triggered another joint publication between the groups of experimentalist Katharina Al-Shamery and theoretician Talat Rahman (University of Central Florida, USA and former Helene-Lange guest professor at the Carl von Ossietzky University). After the first more theory-based publication appearing in April. now the second part has been accepted and will appear in the Journal of the American Chemical Society:

The role of spectator species for amine-surface chemistry: reactions of amines and alkenes on Pt (111),

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacs.5c00567

It is - as usual - open access.

With his experimental work Nils Brinkmann triggered a joint calloboration between the groups of experimentalist Katharina Al-Shamery and theoretician Talat Rahman (University of Central Florida, USA and former Helene-Lange guest professor at the Carl von Ossietzky University) . The first joint paper has been published now with focus on the theory part:

Ashraf, B ; Brinkmann, N ; Austin, D ; Le, D; Al-Shamery, K ; Rahman, TS
JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY C, DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.4c08116

Dr. Lars Mohrhusen was awarded with the Ewald Wicke Award from the German Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry and the Ewald Wicke foundation. Prof. Dr. Katharina Al-Shamery was giving the Laudatio. Prof. Dr. Robert Franke, Evonik Oxeno GmbH & Co. KG, president of the society handed over the certificate.

Philipp Schwartz fellow Rania Elhadi Adam, our group member in Oldenburg, was presenting a poster at the meeting of the Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry (Poster title: "Photoelectrochemical water splitting performance of the ZnO/NiO nanocomposite under visible solar light") in Leipzig (March 17-19, 2025) together with our master student Celina Groothuis (Poster title: "Conventional X-ray source-based time-resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (TR-XPS)").

Lars Mohrhusen recently had the honor of attending the opening ceremony of the 222nd academic year of the Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere, a prestigious scientific academy in northern Italy. During the ceremony in Milan, he received a special mention of the Gian-Paolo-Brivio Award, which recognizes outstanding early-career scientists in the fields of chemistry, physics, and materials science.

Antonio Brancato is back from Sicily to finalise experiments for a publication. Welcome back, Antonio!

Maximilian Grebien published a new paper about methanol partial oxidation and dehydrogenation of methanol at copper clusters on TiO2(110) and SiOx:
Maximilian Grebien and Katharina Al-Shamery
Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 2025, DOI: 10.1039/D4CP03904A

Tamino, a high school student, spent an internship at the Carl von Ossietzky University in our group and the group of Lars Mohrhusen this January. Lars organised a great program. Thank you for your great enthusiasm, Tamino, to dig into experimental work ranging from ultra high vacuum experiments to nanoparticle synthesis involving sophisticated analytical tools. Your ideas how to improve our practical courses for students were inspirational for us.

We wish you good luck for finalising school and hope to see you soon back as our student!

The Rostosk-Oldenburg collaborative article "Controlling the architecture of Au/Pt core–shell
nanocubes via platinum growth mode" by Imke Maack and Katharina Al-Shamery from Oldenburg and Kevin Oldenburg from the University of Rostock is available as an Advance Article at the CrystEngComm homepage. The article is available under this link:

Controlling the architecture of Au/Pt core–shell nanocubes via platinum growth mode In order to overcome the often large activation barriers in heterogeneous catalytic reactions, photocatalysis is a promising path to activate specific molecules with light at moderate temperatures. In particular, bimetallic nanoparticles combining the plasmonic properties of one metal with the high....

To celebrate Justin's birthday, we had waffles in the office last Friday.