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Credit: DESY / Heiner Mueller-Elsner
The key are the ultra-fast flashes of light, with which the team led by Dr. Friedrich Roth works at FLASH in Hamburg, the world s first free-electron laser in the X-ray region. We took advantage of the special properties of this X-ray source and expanded them with time-resolved X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (TR-XPS). This method is based on the external photoelectric effect, for the explanation of which Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. For the first time, we were able to directly analyze the specific charge separation and subsequent processes when light hits a model system such as an organic solar cell. We were also able to determine the efficiency of the charge separation in real-time, explains Dr. Roth from the Institute of Experimental Physics at TU Bergakademie Freiberg.