Nothing worthwhile is accomplished easily, and this summer program at HZB served as a reminder of that. From visa issues as a non-European student to finding accommodation in bustling capital city Berlin, I faced numerous challenges. Literally, it took about four months getting visa and finding the dormitory. But real test started when I reached my apartment in Berlin and found no Pakistani food around…Read More →
The Intersolar trade fair, held in Munich from June 14th to 16th, served as a global platform for experts, industry leaders, and enthusiasts to explore the latest developments in the solar energy sector. Intersolar is part of “The smarter E,” four different exhibitions, Intersolar, ees, Power2Drive and EM-Power, focusing on renewable energy and highlighting groundbreaking advancements in the field – this year under the motto: “Creating a new energy world”. Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), participates every year to Intersolar and presents its research expertise and technological achievements. The HZB booth at Intersolar Europe 2023 At HZB’s booth this year, we presented the main aspects of ourRead More →
Mahmoud Hussein is a PhD candidate at the department for active materials and interfaces for stable perovskite solar cells. In this interview he talks about his experiences working in international teams and how different cultures can contribute to scientific progress by encouraging creative thinking. What is important to you about diversity? The most important aspect in diversity, for me, is having people from different cultures and from different backgrounds – and different science perspectives. That’s very important because this is one of the main driving forces of science. Why? Because when you take people. from different backgrounds, from different educational systems, different academic sub fields,Read More →
During my studentship there is one thing I have discovered above all: patience. Patience is the mother of science, as the saying goes. And I have learned it the hard way. My project is a complex one; like most science projects. I’m trying to synthesize and characterize a new material to act as an absorber of light in solar cells. It is called: copper-barium diselenide. More specifically I want this material to be a top-cell absorber in tandem cells. In fact, this synthesis is not easy: little is known about the compound, and barium is very reactive with oxygen, so one must be very carefulRead More →
When one enters the Lab 120 in the Silicon Photovoltaics institute, the first view of it is this: It was kind of a shock to see all these “hands” floating in the air. They reminded me of an astronaut’s space suit. A very interesting tool, which I was very excited to use. One mission: getting the hands into the glove box A glove box is a device permitting you to do experiments in a different atmosphere as outside. Itis very useful if you work with toxic chemicals like here in the Silicon Photovoltaics Institute. As you handle everything with gloves and it is closed soRead More →
Our Summer Student Daniel talks about his explorations in Berlin. He writes a guide for students with lots of tipps to discover Germany’s capital.Read More →
At BESSY II, we are operating some 50 beamlines, each of which offers the latest methods in spectroscopy and microscopy.
Each beamline has a dedicated beamline scientist, who not only manages all the projects on the beamline and knows its every secret, but also works with local and visiting scientists to get the best results out of the beam and its instruments for every specific research question they have. Without the beamline scientists, much of the science at BESSY II could never happen.
But who are they? What makes a good beamline scientist and where do they come from? In this little series you are going to find out. Today we introduce Dr. Götz Schuck, who works at the KMC-2 and the KMC-3 beamlines.Read More →
Actually, I had a funny-bad experience in my first week living in Berlin. On that day, I just wanted to survey “how to reach HZB from apartment”. I was accompanied by my mom and dad. We bought single trip ABC ticket from Jungfernheide (near Charlottenburg) station since we hadn’t known yet about the zone. The outbound journey was fine, we took S41 then S7 to Wannsee and 318 bus. There was also a ticket checker but we passed it. When we did the return journey, we got some problems. At first, the ticket machine couldn’t be changed into English version. Our phone were alsoRead More →
In order to make use of the current produced in a solar cell, one needs electrodes and cables to transport the produced charge carriers to the consumer – but how do the charge carriers reach the electrodes? In many solar cell types, a conductive material is necessary. As the sunlight still needs to reach the absorber layer (where the energy-transfer from photons to electrons and thus the generation of the charge carriers happens), this material not just needs to be conductive but also transparent in a wide wavelength range. This difficult task is taken over by Transparent Conductive Oxides (TCOs). Metal oxides have shown toRead More →
I want you to imagine the sun with wrong rays that cause a lot of problems. We cannot enjoy the sunshine. We want to do something to replace the wrong rays with the right ones. In my scientific project, the sun is germanium (Ge) nanoparticles, and the rays are a ligand. The wrong ligand is oleylamine. Oleylamine is an organic molecule containing an amino group and a long hydrocarbon chain. It would be perfect to remove oleylamine from the particles and attach another molecule. Speaking in scientific language, I am trying to do ligand exchange on germanium nanoparticles surface. Why germanium? Firstly, Ge is anRead More →