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Abstract

Electrochemical energy conversion is an important research field due to it is central to the production and utilization of clean sustainable energies with lower environmental impact than conventional technologies based on fossil fuels. To improve these technologies it is necessary to obtain an atomic level understanding of the electrochemical process occurring at the solid-gas and solid-liquid interfaces under reaction conditions. A host of techniques has been used to obtain such understanding. However, these powerful techniques are not element specific in contrast to X-ray based techniques which provide unambiguous assignment of chemical species. X-ray techniques provide insights into the electronic structure, in particular photoelectron spectroscopy (PES): XPS, x-ray emission (XES) and x-ray absorption (XAS). For the important light elements that are part of fuel chemicals in energy technologies, the use of spectroscopies in the soft x-ray range (5-8) is highly desirable. These techniques require high vacuum environments, and therefore are hardly compatible with liquids environments, including water and non-aqueous battery electrolytes. In this talk, I will summarized some of the recent advances in order to overcoming the so-called "pressure gap" making and small overview from UHV till liquid bulk conditions.