Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory
(Sitting from front) Iradwikanari Waluyo, Mingzhao Liu, Dario Stacchiola, (standing from front) Mehmet Topsakal, Mark Hybertsen, Deyu Lu, and Eli Stavitski at the Inner-Shell Spectroscopy beamline of Brookhaven Lab's National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II). The scientists performed x-ray absorption spectroscopy experiments at NSLS-II to characterize the chemical state of titanium dioxide (titania) coatings on zinc oxide nanowires. They chemically processed the nanowires to make the coatings—which boost the efficiency of the nanowires in catalyzing the water-splitting reaction that produces oxygen and hydrogen, a sustainable fuel—more likely to adhere. These characterization results were coupled with electron microscopy imaging and theoretical analyses to generate a model of the amorphous (noncrystal) atomic structure of titania.