Department Highly Sensitive X-ray Spectroscopy
Doctoral students, with MSc degree in Physics or Chemistry, for cryogenic gas-phase XAS and XMCD studies of organometallic compounds, transition metal clusters, metal centers, and coordination entities
We study the electronic and magnetic properties of transition metal ions and transition metal centers in clusters, organometallic coordination entities, and chelate complexes that we build up and investigate atom by atom or ligand by ligand. To this end, we operate a unique cryogenic ion trap setup for gas-phase soft-x-ray absorption (XAS) and x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) spectroscopy on mass-selected ions as well as a liquid-jet experiment for resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) at BESSY II. With both endstations we can examine highly-diluted gas-phase and liquid-phase matter with high sensitivity. We use these techniques to achieve a fundamental understanding of electronic structure, spin state, oxidation state, and valence electron delocalization in coordination entities of 3d and 4f transition elements.
Our department, in cooperation with Universität Freiburg, currently offers a PhD student/doctoral research position at our location in Berlin-Adlershof: