Concluding Remarks: Good vibrations at interfaces as probed with spectroscopy

Abstract

The 2026 Faraday Discussions on the topic of “Vibrations at Interfaces” brought together a group of scientists to address the forefront topics and related challenges and limitations when using different forms of infrared and Raman spectroscopy to interrogate the surfaces of chemical systems from both life and materials sciences. The invited, oral and poster presentations at the meeting nicely illustrate the great progress made in the past years to (a) capture the chemical complexity under realistic conditions (in vivo, in vitro, in situ and operando), (b) investigate the surface in silico and (c) track the changes taking place in both space and time. The following text demonstrates these three areas by using examples from the field of catalysis. The first example discusses the use of photo-induced force microscopy to investigate the zeolitic-imidazolate framework surfaces while interacting with formaldehyde. The second example focuses on the use of infrared spectroscopy of the CO2 methanation reaction thereby focusing on how we can assign infrared features to surface species thereby making use of theoretical calculations. The last example discusses the use of time-gated Raman spectroscopy to track the catalytic cracking of n-hexane.