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A femtosecond laser process is presented increasing the surface area of copper electrocatalysts for an electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR). The laser treatment allows us to tune the surface morphology and the chemical composition of the copper electrocatalysts. This tunability is used to correlate the role of the surface area and catalyst dopants with the selectivity of the CO2RR. The liquid products of the CO2RR are monitored through ex situ nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The products' distribution shows that the electrode surface area plays a key role in the electrochemical conversion of CO2 into multicarbon liquid products. We show that sulfur dopants boost the production of formate. Remarkably, by co-doping sulfur and fluoride, we show that the chalcogenide dopant counteracts the known boosting effect of fluoride to convert CO2 into multicarbon products. Oxygen doping in the range of 2-19 atom % does not significantly affect the distribution of liquid products from CO2 electroreduction. In a broad perspective, this work highlights the potential of the femtosecond laser process to fine-tune surfaces to produce photo- and electrocatalyst materials.

An entirely femtosecond laser (fs-laser) based process for the production of stable, enlarged and alloyed nickel surfaces is presented. The process allows the use of metal foils and aqueous salt solutions as alloying element sources. We alloy iron from an aqueous element source as well as molybdenum and cobalt from commercially available foils on nickel mesh surfaces without further coating process. It is shown that the content of alloyed iron on the nickel mesh surface structured with the fs-laser depends on the concentration of the aqueous iron(II) sulfate solution used. The alloy content of cobalt and molybdenum is controlled by adjustable laser parameters. Cross-sections prepared by a focused ion beam and subsequent energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy shows that molybdenum and nickel form alloyed nanoscale particles on the structured nickel surface. The combination of an aqueous iron(II) sulfate solution and a molybdenum metal foil leads to a ternary nickel-molybdenum-iron surface alloy. The presented fs-laser alloying process can be applied to further metal combinations and offers the potential to create new materials and properties.

A compact and wireless multifunctional human-machine interface (HMI) based on fiber Bragg grating (FBG) technology is presented. The interface is embedded into a glove and enables the motion capture of a human hand with finger tracking and hand wrist rotation monitoring, as well as temperature and contact force detection. For the realization of a complex hand tracking, a novel fiber optical rotation sensor based on three-dimensional shape sensing with Edge-FBG is presented. The data are evaluated within a micro-interrogator and wireless transferred to a smart glass in real-time. The HMI addressed different applications in motion capture for virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR).

Commonly, sparks emit light according to the well‐known black (gray) body radiation. Recently, we reported on color‐changing sparks based on erbium powder, which switch their light emission between black body emission (surface combustion) and element‐specific emission (vapor phase combustion). Herein, we investigated the spark formation from the adjacent rare‐earth elements. The corresponding boiling points are significantly below (Yb, Sm, Tm) or above (Y, Lu) the boiling point of Er. While Yb and Sm evaporate too fast to form longer sparks, Y, Lu and Tm form color‐changing sparks with varying length of the element‐specific emission phase. The sparks were investigated by time‐resolved emission spectroscopy, long‐time exposures, and NIR/MIR imaging. The same basic pyrotechnic formulation containing one of these metal powders reveals a strongly differing burning behavior depending on the boiling point of the metal. The burning characteristics change from a green strobe (Yb) to intense colorful crackling (Tm) and finally a sparkling fountain with long‐flying sparks (Lu, Y, Er).

Active anodes which are operating in highly stable protic media such as 1,1,1,3,3,3-hexafluoroisopropanol are rare. Nickel forms, within this unique solvent, a non-sacrificial active anode at constant current conditions, which is superior to the reported powerful molybdenum system. The reactivity for dehydrogenative coupling reactions of this novel active anode increases when the electrolyte is not stirred during electrolysis. Besides the aryl-aryl coupling, a dehydrogenative arylation reaction of benzylic nitriles was found while stirring the mixture providing quick access to synthetically useful building blocks.

Cladding waveguide fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) provide a compact and simple solution for fiber shape sensing. The shape sensing accuracy is limited by birefringence, which is induced by bending and the non-isotropic FBG structure (written by femtosecond laser point-by-point technique). An algorithm based on an artificial neural network for fiber shape sensing is demonstrated, which enables increased accuracy, better robustness, and less time latency. This algorithm shows great potential in the application of high-accuracy real-time fiber shape measurements.

In proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) cells the performance and thus the conversion efficiency are influenced by the interface between the porous transport layer (PTL) and the catalyst layer (CL). In the following paper, this interface is modified by the use of femtosecond laser-induced surface structuring, so that the specific surface area of the titanium based fibers of the PTL is increased. The resulting morphology exhibits two roughness levels of (i) a relatively coarse structure featuring tips of a few micrometers in diameter and depth, which are each covered in turn by (ii) a substructure of smaller tips of a few to several hundred nanometers in diameter and depth. PEMWE electrochemical characterization and short-term stress tests reveal that the cell performance is increased due to the laser-structuring of the PTL surface towards the CL. For instance, the cell voltage is reduced by approximately 30 mV after 100 h at 4 A cm−2. These beneficial effects are observed over the entire current density range and thus correspond to a decreased equivalent cell resistance of at least 6 mO cm2 for electrical interfacial contact losses and at least 2 mO cm2 for mass transport losses. A physical characterization by scanning electron microscopy shows that the CL surface is much rougher and more jagged when using laser-structured fibers. Thus, the gaseous oxygen and the liquid water transport both from and to the active sites of the catalyst seem to be improved.

In the present work, the ultra-short pulse laser ablation method is applied to create novel surface alloys on NiFe electrodes for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in alkaline water electrolysis. The nickel-to-iron ratio in the alloy can be controlled with the ultra-short pulse laser ablation method by varying the thickness of electrochemically deposited iron layers onto the nickel mesh substrate. Besides the application of the additional catalyst, the laser treatment enhances the surface area and a defined micro- and submicrometer structure is created in a single step. The laser structured nickel-iron electrodes show a significantly lower overpotential of 249 mV than an electrochemically deposited Ni-NiFe alloy with 292 mV at 10 mA cm−2, 298 K and 32.5 wt% KOH for the OER, although some loss of iron over time could not be prevented.

A new and powerful active anode system that can be operated in 1,1,1,3,3,3‐hexafluoro‐2‐propanol (HFIP) has been discovered. In HFIP the molybdenum anode forms a compact, conductive, and electroactive layer of higher‐valent molybdenum species. This system can replace powerful but stoichiometrically required MoV reagents for the dehydrogenative coupling of aryls. This electrolytic reaction is more sustainable and allows the conversion of a broad scope of activated arenes.

For the first time, we report on micro- and nanostructured Ti surfaces produced by ultrashort-pulse laser processing followed by sputter deposition of Pt aiming at efficient cathode electrodes for alkaline water electrolysis. We studied the laser processing-induced surface morphology, the elemental composition of the surface, the specific surface increase, the wetting behavior as well as the activity of the hydrogen evolution reaction. It is demonstrated that ultrashort-pulse laser structuring in combination with thin layer catalyst deposition can dramatically boost the performance of cathodes for the hydrogen evolution reaction due to the enormous increase in specific surface in combination with superhydrophilic and superwetting properties leading to a rapid gas bubble detachment.

In this study, we report on micro- and nanostructured Ni surfaces produced by an ultrashort pulse laser process as cathode materials for the alkaline electrolysis of water. We studied the influence of the laser-induced microstructure and surface morphology as well as a cyclic voltammetric activation process on the electrochemical activity of the hydrogen evolution reaction. Galvanostatic techniques, steady-state polarization curves to attain Tafel parameters and capacitance calculations via electrochemical impedance spectroscopy were used to analyze the electrodes. The analyses reveal that the ultrashort pulse laser process increases the specific surface on formerly flat Ni surfaces. Further, the cyclic voltammetric activation process gives rise to an increased intrinsic activity. Both effects lead to a strongly reduced overpotential value. This work demonstrates that different processes can be combined to dramatically boost the activity of Ni electrodes for the hydroge n evolution reaction.