Lab-XAFS Workshop

On March 17 and 18, 2026, the Lab-XAFS workshop LabXSpec4 took place at the Max Planck Institute in Mühlheim an der Ruhr. The workshop was organized by Yves Kayser and Serena deBeer from the MPI for Chemical Energy Conversion. This international workshop on the development and application of laboratory-based X-ray absorption spectroscopy has previously been held in Helsinki, Berlin, and Budapest. Frithjof Mähler (see photo) from the Materials Analytics group gave a presentation on his work in XES, which was very well received. X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XANES and EXAFS) is particularly well-suited for determining the oxidation states of metal ions and is widely used, for example, in catalysis research. However, access is usually limited to large-scale research facilities. Therefore, transferring this method to the laboratory is an important step toward making it accessible to as many research groups as possible.