News & Highlights

A study involving PSI scientists from the LMS lab, and just published in Physical Review Letters has found that in manganese oxide, a textbook antiferromagnetic material,  the site of an implanted spin-polarized muon is not well identified, but can change due to a previously neglected effect: magnetostriction.

A large consortium of scientists, coordinated by PSI researchers in the LMS laboratory, led the most comprehensive verification effort so far on computer codes for materials simulations, providing their colleagues with a reference dataset and a set of guidelines for assessing and improving existing and future codes. 

Co oxides with perovskite-related structure are particularly promising, cost-effective OER catalysts. However, the increasing Co demand by the battery industry is pushing the search for Co-free alternatives. Here we investigate the potential of the Co-free layered perovskite family RBaCuFeO_5+δ (R = 4f lanthanide), where we identify the critical structural and electronic variables leading to high OER catalytical performance. The employed methodology, based in the use of advanced neutron and X-ray synchrotron techniques combined with ab initio DFT calculations allowed to reveal LaBaCuFeO_5+δ as new, promising Co-free electroctalyst. Moreover, we could show that this material can be industrially produced in nanocrystalline form. We believe that the reported results and methodology may contribute to the implementation of new technologies aimed to generate energy with lower carbon emissions, and can also inspire the scientific community in their search of other Co-free materials with good OER electrocatalytical properties.

A consortium led by Dr. Giovanni Pizzi, Group leader of the “Materials Software and Data” group in the Laboratory for Materials Simulations, has won funding of almost CHF1.3 million for a three-year project dubbed PREMISE: “Open and reproducible materials science research.”