UniFEL`s experts had several coordination meetings with German colleagues from University of Freiburg in October, 2015. Governing Council of Russian-German lab at BESSY-II also discussed cooperation issues and promising projects in Dresden University of Technology on October 11. Thus Sergei Molodtsov, University of Freiburg`s professor and UniFEL`s co-director and Pavel Brunkov, head of European x-ray free electron laser (European XFEL) and UniFEL`s engineer took part in that meeting.
Having discussed the most relevant projects international researchers met again on October 12 so as to exchange their viewpoints on the cooperation agreement`s details. Thus experts decided to focus on electronic structure of graphene oxide during its transforming into graphene caused by deleting or replacing of oxygen functional groups from its surface research. A new type of graphene repaired with the assistance of this technology has low defect concentration. It can be used for development of new electronic and optical devices.
“Functional groups control electrophysical and optical properties of graphene; deleting or replacing functional groups is transformation of their characteristics. We expect material`s properties to be changed. Thus this research aims to discover which of them will be transformed,” noted Pavel Brunkov.
The scientists are going to provide this research through x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy using ESCALAB™ 250Xi unit in November, 2015 at University of Freiburg. Igor Pronin, UniFEL`s engineer will head this project. Then researchers plan to provide more detailed analysis of the electronic structure using synchrotron radiation BESSY-II and European XFEL`s x-ray units.