Best Poster Award for Thomas Gänsler

Thomas Gänsler, doctoral student in the Max Planck group “Nanoanalytics and Interfaces”, won the Best Poster Award during the Summer School CINEMAX IV in Toreby, Denmark. He presented the electron tomography technique employed to reconstruct the 3D volumes of individual nanoparticles that catalyse the reaction in a commercially employed fuel cell. Their degradation was studied in accelerated lifetime tests where repeated tracking of individual particles was achieved. The combination of electrochemical stress testing and electron microscopy investigations revealed the individual degradation processes involved. These results have been achieved in collaboration with the department of “Interface Chemistry and Surface Engineering” and are published in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (Volume 42, Issue 40, Pages 25359–25371).

The topics of the Summer School covered the complete workflow of tomographic studies, starting from data acquisition, reconstruction and segmentation up to physical modelling of material properties. In extensive lab work sessions the process was deepened and applied to an individual task. A final presentation of the achieved results concluded the course. During that week, the students were given the opportunity to show former and present work and discuss it with their peers and lecturers.