12 June 2023
Anja Haags has received this year's Young Scientist Prize at the 13th International Conference on Surface Structures (ICSOS-13). The chemist, who is doing her doctorate under Prof. Stefan Tautz at the Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI-3) in Jülich, is working on the imaging of molecular orbitals using the so-called photoemission orbital tomography (POT) technique.
Orbitals show where electrons are located around an atom or molecule, similar to a photo in long-term exposure. In textbooks, they are often depicted as colourful balloons or clouds. As part of her doctorate at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Anja Haags, together with colleagues from the institute and external research partners, had further developed the POT-technique and was able to resolve two different types of molecular orbitals for the first time.
In addition to pi orbitals, which typically accumulate like a cloud above and below the atomic plane of planar molecules, Anja Haags was able to image sigma orbitals, which completely enclose the atomic bodies like a shell. The advanced approach makes it possible to understand chemical reactions at the molecular level even more precisely and in greater detail than before.
The ICSOS Young Scientist Prize, which comes with a purse of $1000, honours a young scientist for his or her doctoral thesis and is awarded regularly during the ICSOS conferences. The winner is selected in a two-stage process. Anja Haags, who now has moved to University of Bonn, has prevailed in the final round against four other outstanding candidates.
