Dalton Abdala's webpage

Molecular environmental scientists employ a combination of micro and macroscale techniques to elucidate the reaction processes taking place at surface and subsurface environments.

Themes generally addressed by molecular environmental scientists involve the role of microbes in mineral transformations, cycling of plant nutrients and heavy metals and the impacts of anthropogenic activites in the environment.

Advances in the use of synchrotron radiaton techniques have enabled researchers to elucidate environmental interfacial reactions that were once only glimpsed by theory, which now can otherwise be directly observed. 

This is because synchrotron radiation gives access to X-ray energies ranging from ~ 10 eV up to 100 keV, which is the typical energy range where wavelengths are short enough, comparable to interatomic lengths, thus enabling one to obtain detailed local atomic structural information of stuff.

Molecular Environmental Sciences (MES) research at the LNLS has rather relied on synchrotron-based X-rays absorption spectroscopy (XAS), X-rays diffraction (XRD), X-rays fluorescence (XRF) and X-rays microtomography to study interfacial reactions at their very fundamental level - the molecular/atomic level.