The underlying focus of our work is the development of advanced electron microscopy (EM) methods to extract (structural) information about structural and functional materials.

At every stage of materials research and development, studies of the structure, properties and performance of materials are important, including detailed insights at the atomic level. To our advantage, EM has become a powerful and indispensable tool that can provide such vital information. Combined with complementary characterization techniques and computational models, our studies are crucial to understand in more detail the relationship between a material's structures and its unique properties on the characteristic length scale.

Our ongoing activities focus on methodological aspects of state-of-the-art EM to open up possibilities for atomic-scale imaging even of delicate nanostructures that play a crucial role in numerous applications in materials research and development.

Furthermore, the actual state and function of nanomaterials “when in use” cannot always be deduced from examination under standard EM conditions or from post-mortem studies. The additional application of in situ and operando techniques enables the characterization of nanostructures under (near) operational or environmental conditions, e.g. the direct observation and quantification of transformation events, and provides further insights into important materials science questions, including fundamental phenomena related to growth, stability, phase transitions, corrosion, dynamic behavior, etc.