Many chemical reactions take place at the gas-solid interphase, and understanding chemical processes occurring at this interphase at reaction conditions is therefore important. For example, it might help to develop new and superior catalyst materials reducing energy and/or raw material consumption.

In my PRISMAS PhD project, I use Ambient Pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (APXPS) to study different reactions while they occur at the gas-solid interphase at catalyst surfaces. Until now, this technique – which is capable of measuring surface and gas composition simultaneously - has been mainly used in static reaction conditions. That is at fixed temperature and gas compositions. However, more and more evidence points toward the fact that real catalytic surfaces are dynamic in nature. Thus, it is of utmost importance to develop experimental techniques and methods that are capable of following this dynamic. To mimic real dynamic catalyst surfaces, I use temperature- and gas-phase pulses in my project to drive structural oscillations on the surface. At the same time, I use time-resolved (tr)-APXPS to monitor surface oscillations and catalytic properties with high time resolution. As the starting point I concentrate my research on the methanol oxidation reaction (MOR). This reaction has applications in processes such as Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFCs) and the Hydrogen evolution reactions. Besides my initial study of tr-APXPS studies of the MOR reaction, I work on developing the experimental setups for tr-APXPS at the MAX IV laboratory.