Electron microscopy of soft functional materials: challenges and opportunities

Date

Aug 27, 2026

Time

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Speaker

Prof. Dr. Nadja Tarakina

Affiliation

Innovative Electron Microscopy Department, INM-Leibniz Institute for New Materials, Saarbrücken

Language

en

Main Topic

Materialien

Host

Description

Soft functional materials (polymers, colloids, biomaterials, gels, liquid crystals, etc.) are crucial components of many everyday products and are an indispensable part of high-tech applications. Their mesoscale (nanoscale to microscale) structure, morphology and composition dictate their properties. While electron microscopy is one of the most powerful tools to characterise materials at atomic and nanoscales, its application to soft materials is challenging due to their inherent beam sensitivity, low contrast and intrinsic entropic nature. In my talk I will give an overview of research activities at my group in the application of advanced electron microscopy methodologies (low-dose HR-TEM, energy filtered electron radial distribution function analysis, EXELFS, LC-TEM, etc.) to the characterisation of soft functional materials and their interfaces (e.g. carbon nitride photocatalyst heterojunctions, colloidal particles in liquids, single-atom catalysts, etc.) and present future opportunities in this research direction.

Links

• Seminars at the IFW

Last modified: Aug 9, 2026, 7:36:08 AM