Scientific Highlights

The increasing risk of extended electricity supply disruptions and severe electricity price fluctuations  strongly motivate an evaluation of electricity supply resilience. In this direction, this research proposes a multicriteria decision support framework to assess resilience at a country level, based on three major dimensions: Resist, Restabilize and Recover. In total, 35 European countries are ranked according to their performance on 17 indicators, through a synergy of MCDA methods, techniques and communication protocols. The assessment framework has been extended to incorporate the Choquet Integral method, in order to accommodate potentially interacting pairs of criteria and negate their arbitrary effects on the final evaluation results. The analysis incorporates country data from credible international databases, as well as the preference information of a European energy expert. The results are envisaged to support energy policymakers in Europe and provide guidelines and areas for improvement at a country level.

GdSb_0.46Te_1.48, a nonsymmorphic Dirac semimetal with Dirac nodes at the Fermi level, has a rich magnetic phase diagram with one of the phases predicted to be an antiferromagnetic skyrmion state. In the current work, we investigate GdSb_0.71Te_1.22 through bulk magnetization measurements, single-crystal, and powder synchrotron X-ray diffraction, as well as single-crystal hot-neutron diffraction. We resolve a weak orthorhombic distortion with respect to the tetragonal structure and charge density wave (CDW) satellites due to incommensurate modulations of the crystal structure. At 2 K the magnetic structure is modulated with two propagation vectors, k_I = (0.45 0 0.45) and k_II = (0.4 0 0), with all their arms visible. While k_I persists up to the transition to the paramagnetic state at T_N = 11.9 K, k_II disappears above an intermediate magnetic transition at T₁ = 5 K. Whereas magnetic field applied along the c-axis has only a weak effect on the intensity of antiferromagnetic reflections, it is effective in inducing an additional ferromagnetic component on Gd atoms. We refine possible magnetic structures of GdSb_0.71Te_1.22 and discuss the possibility of hosting magnetic textures with non-trivial 3D+ 2 topologies in the GdSb_1−xTe_1+x series.

PSI has a unique (worldwide) environment for the investigation of highly radioactive / toxic materials:
> Materials (different fuel types, very high burn-up, different cladding materials, materials activated in SINQ).
> The hot lab with advanced tools for microsample analysis and preparation.
> The large-scale equipment for advanced material analysis.

This unique combination at PSI allows us to meet the needs of our industrial partners to improve plant safety / efficiency, up to fundamental research.
The quantitative distribution of fission products over the cross-section of a pellet with a shielded electron probe microanalyzer (EPMA) used for verification analysis of the material behavior to validate the model. In this context, Xe behavior during transients/failure (LOCA, RIA) is an important safety parameter that can’t be measured with the EPMA at the periphery. Microstructural EBSD investigations on a microsample extend the information horizon, which is deepened at the microXAS beamline by detailed X-ray analyses.

Evaluating potential electrolyte candidates is typically a lengthy procedure requiring long-term cycling experiments. To speed this process up, we have investigated potentiostatic lithium plating as a potential method for fast electrolyte suitability investigation. The applications of this methodology is not limited to liquid electrolytes, - effects of solid-state electrolytes, coatings, and other modifications can be readily assessed.

The coupling of spin, charge and lattice degrees of freedom results in the emergence of novel states of matter across many classes of strongly correlated electron materials. A model example is unconventional superconductivity, which is widely believed to arise from the coupling of electrons via spin excitations. In cuprate high-temperature superconductors, the interplay of charge and spin degrees of freedom is also reflected in a zoo of charge and spin- density wave orders that are intertwined with superconductivity ...