The main goal of this project is the development of efficient photocatalysts for the durable electrochemical conversion of CO2 into high-value chemicals using solar light as energy source. To achieve this goal, we aim at developing novel model plasmonic catalysts containing bi- or multi-metallic clusters that are made in the gas and deposited in titania nanotubes. The catalysts will be characterized ex situ by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and under operating conditions by X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) spectroscopy and high-resolution Raman and DRIFTS to unravel charge transfer mechanisms, active sites and intermediate molecules in the reaction pathway. Finite element theoretical modeling and density functional theory (DFT) calculations will be used to increase the understanding of the photoreduction mechanism, contributing to the design a novel generation of CO2 photoreduction catalysts.The candidate will use a laser-ablation cluster-beam deposition instrument to deposit in vacuum size-selected mono- and multi-metallic nanoclusters/ nanoparticles on titania nanotubes and TEM grids. He/she will perform the XPS characterization and operate the state-of-the-art probe-lens aberration corrected STEM (Jeol - ARM200F) housed in the Leuven Nanocenter to characterize ex situ the structure and atomic arrangement of selected bi- and multi-metallic clusters deposited directly on TEM grids. He/she will participate in the beam time proposals writing, prepare the in situ /operando XAFS measurements using in-house cells at Soleil (Paris-Saclay), the Swiss Light Source (SLS) at PSI and at the European Synchrotron (ESRF), take part in the beam times and the results analysis. He/she may also contribute to the DFT calculations, in collaboration with the University of Milan. The successful candidate will work in close collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of researchers within the project consortium.