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In: Energymaterials, Summerstudents

Non-renewable energy has shaped the world along the past century, and distributed the powers and political blocs, and as a result contributed to the distribution of prosperity, perhaps freedom in regions, and misery in other regions. Will renewable energy reshape the world again? Non-renewable energy is easy to store. In general, it is stored as chemical energy in oil liquids, natural gas, or even coal, but this ease of storage may not be in renewable energy so there may be another issue that will contribute to creating competition among the peoples of the earth and their governments, and here I hope that the competition willRead More →

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In: Energymaterials, Students, Summerstudents

My summer research project is Optimizing Buried Junction Cubic and Orthorhombic SnS Photocathodes.  For many years my research group have been searching for semiconductors and solar absorber materials that are non-toxic, abundant, stable, which crystallize at low temperature and are fabricated at low cost, but also have favorable optical and electrical properties for solar energy conversion. Figure 1: π-SnS photocathodes a) before and b) after coating with a passivation and protection layer. When designing a system for solar water splitting it has been proposed that an idealized tandem device, consisting of two semiconductors with band gaps around 1.0 to 1.3 eV and 1.6 to 2.0Read More →

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In: Energymaterials, Students, Summerstudents

Have you noticed that strange whistling sound on Hahn-Meitner Campus at Wannsee? When I told the PhD students of the research group for inorganic and solid state chemistry at the Technische Universität Berlin that I will be part of the Summer Students Programme at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, one of them had something interesting to tell me. He advised me to pay attention to a whistling sound on Campus Wannsee and he also revealed to me where to find the source of the sound. So on my fourth day at Wannsee I decided to find that thing that made me listen attentively to its music. AtRead More →

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In: Energymaterials, Students, Summerstudents

Exploring the hidden secrets of materials using spectroscopy Over 60% of Germans rely on glasses and unsurprisingly, this is not a modern phenomenon. The first eyeglasses were made in Italy in the 13th century and their importance has grown since. But sometimes, good vision is not sufficient in order to explore the hidden secrets of materials. In the last century, physicists have developed a method called spectroscopy, which is a technique used to analyse light by breaking it up into its component colours and it’s something that I am doing very regularly during the summer student programme at the HZB. Designing the next generation ofRead More →

THE ROAD TO ARTIFICIAL PHOTOSYNTHESIS

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In: Energymaterials, International, Students, Summerstudents

As a summer student at the HZB, I am working at the Institute for Solar Fuels on Artificial Photosynthesis research. In the project, I am taking part in, we aim  to improve and characterize two materials, namely BaxMnyOz and MnxVyOz. By using Pulse Laser Deposition (PLD) as the synthesis method, our goal is to investigate the structure and photoelectrochemical properties of these materials by various methods and optimize them towards improving their solar-water-splitting efficiency. This project and research at the Institute for Solar Fuels is based on the search for new light absorbing materials, which can harness the sun’s radiation to produce clean energy from the most abundant resource on earth, water (H2O). This hasRead More →

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In: Conference, Energymaterials

At the Interdisciplinary conference on „INNOVATION IN SOLAR BUILDING SKINS & ENERGY EFFICIENCY TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE CITIES”, 19th to 20th march in Berlin, experts from the building sector, politics, finance and photovoltaics discussed why Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) is not already more widely applied in buildings (see also HZB-webinfo ) and what innovations are still needed. Statements from participants of the conference:   Lighthouse projects show what is possible Impressive projects by architects and engineering offices demonstrate what can be done already: Elegant modern buildings with solar facades and solar active materials for windows, pavements or other surfaces do not only provide energy and mitigate climateRead More →

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In: Energymaterials

Even if quantum physics is well established since roughly ninety years, there are still some quantum effects in matter which have been theoretically predicted but up to now not yet seen experimentally. It was the physicist Hans Bethe, who first described theoretically in 1931 what happens in a one dimensional quantum spin system: under certain conditions, magnetic  excitations may interact and give rise to a collective excitation, known as “Bethe strings”.  But in real matter, strictly one dimensional systems are rare, so Bethe strings have not been a common phenomenon. Now those Bethe strings have been discovered for the first time experimentally by the AugsburgRead More →

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In: Careers, Energymaterials

An unusual science conference (not only) for young female scientists: April 29-30, 2018 Near the city of Goslar in the beautiful Harz mountains, an unusual science meeting is organised. The location is the Mönchehaus Museum (www.moenchehaus.de). I was attending this conference some years ago and I can really recommend it. The speakers are exclusively very renowned women in materials science, heading institutes at MIT, MPG or other prestigious research institutions. And multiple occasions are given to get into exchange with them. Discussions were open and vivid, and I guess many young women got motivated to strive for a scientific career. The organiser, Prof Katarina Al-Shamery, CarlRead More →

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In: Energymaterials, Lightsources

Nanoparticles are tiny, really tiny. Only a fraction of a micrometer or some nanometers in size. And only some thousands of molecules strong,  their properties can differ dramatically from those of their larger cousins. Titaniumdioxide, a whitish powder, can form such nanoparticles. In water, these nanoparticles can act as catalysts, when excited with light. and facilitate water splitting or water remediation. However, what happens exactly when TiO2 and water get into contact and which impact this is having on the electronic structure of TiO2 remained in the dark: it is very tricky to probe nanoparticle–water interface experimentally and to observe changes. Soft X-rays at BESSYRead More →

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In: Careers, Energymaterials

Altmetrics just published the list of the top 100 scientific articles of 2017, which attracted the most online attention. None of the articles in the top 100 is dealing with materials research. Nevertheless, already the second most spread article is concerning us as well: It is a study on mental health of PhD students. The paper was spread more than 7000 times by twitter, posted 117 times on facebook and quoted in more than 20 online-articles. And it is giving food for thought: Every third PhD suffering seriously According to the study “Work organization and mental health problems in PhD students”, published in Research Policy,Read More →