Operando Laboratory-based X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy: Guidelines for Newcomers in the Field

Abstract

The new possibility to perform operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) in the laboratory expands the potential field of applications towards a broad research community. These applications are multidisciplinary at heart and benefit from joint expertise from different fields, most importantly chemistry, physics, geology, and instrumentation. Hence, a development of collaboration networks that combine skills and knowhow from different fields is highly beneficial in this endeavor. As operando laboratory-based XAS constitutes a highly interesting, advanced, and powerful characterization technique, we provide in this article practical guidelines for newcomers in the field, who would like to employ it. Here, we will describe ten important steps towards a successful operando laboratory-based XAS experiment, which are not only useful for the catalysis community, but for a much wider audience from other research fields, such as environmental chemistry as well as battery and fuel cell research.