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At HZB about 150 young scientists are working on their doctoral dissertation. 81 come from abroad to Berlin to do their PhD in the HZB labs in Wannsee or Adlershof. The PhD students at HZB have organized themselves: twice a month, they invite to an informal get-together, they plan workshops and an annual PhD retreat in a country hotel in Brandenburg. This is actively supported by the management. I recently asked Daniel Meza, one of eight current doctoral student representatives about their activities. Daniel, why do you work as a representative in the PhD students organization ? Daniel: Maybe it’s a bit romantic, but forRead More →

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In: Energymaterials, Students, Summerstudents

Quantum Mechanics Can Be Useful Too! Nowadays, it seems that quantum mechanics is seen more as “spooky” than practical. Thus, I am here to “de-mystify” some of the science behind a fascinating process that’s yet to be simulated properly. My research group investigates the theory behind what is called Interatomic Coulomb Electron Capture (ICEC). This fascinating universal quantum process is yet to be fully understood, and we are here to change that. Someday, this could be an incredibly useful tool to revolutionize atomic and quantum chemical energy transfers. ICEC In A Nutshell The general process includes 3 main steps that occur simultaneously. We’ve got two atoms, atom A andRead More →

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In: Energymaterials, Students, Summerstudents

In chemistry, working up a synthesis route or a method which leads to the favored product is a challenging, lengthy procedure. Most of the time it is based on the concept “trial and error” and a lot is discovered by coincidence. For instance, the today’s industrial processes hydroformylation and the Czochralski process have their roots in accidental discoveries and very precise observation. Before a synthesis method becomes a large industrial process the synthesis must be optimized in a much smaller scale. That happens in the laboratory and is an odyssey that includes varying different parameters. Chemists refer to their work in the laboratory as “cooking”.Read More →

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In: International, Students, Summerstudents

If you try to search for “PSO” abbreviation in wiki you may find Pacific Symphony Orchestra or Phase-shift oscillator. However, my project at HZB is about neither music nor electricity, but mathematics. For almost a month here I have been working on an algorithm called Particle Swarm Optimization method and I would like you to have some impression of it.  Optimization Actually, the definition of optimization problem is quite simple. One has a function of n-variables f(x1, …, xn) and seeks to find such values of variables that give minimum to the function. However, the solution is not that simple, because in general you cannotRead More →

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In: Energymaterials, Students, Summerstudents

A friend of mine that is not connected with physics at all once wondered what I were doing at neutron reactor. That is why she asked me a simple question: “How will your work save the world?” When you are deep inside of your work, physicists, chemists, biologists sometimes forget about that big beautiful aim of everything what we are doing here. Science is not only for your own development, your own interest: it is the way to make the world around better, it is an instrument for doing something great. So, how am I going to save the world? You won’t believe, with water.Read More →

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In: Energymaterials, Students, Summerstudents

  Why so charming the science is? I think this question always lingers in our mind. When I was a child, I remember the best day maybe the day I got a box of crayons from my parents, I used them to draw a bird, a cloud, and my happy family. Over time, I became a master student at Peking University (China), and my major research field is organic materials synthesis and application. Luckily, this summer I became a summer student of HZB, have to say, I really enjoy the life here, so I decided to make an electrochromic graffito as a gift for HZB. As you can see in theRead More →

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In: Lightsources, Students, Summerstudents

Time is an intriguing concept, isn’t it? We could summarize our own existence in terms of seconds, but there is so much more happening in shorter periods of time, and that’s the main objective of my project. We care about “picoseconds”, an incredibly small subdivision of the second. To help putting things into perspective, there are as many picoseconds in a second as seconds are in THIRTY ONE THOUSAND AND SEVEN HUNDRED years. Yeah, that´s right. But what the hell happens during that time? Well, electrons happen. The guys responsible for driving our whole world as we know it today happen to have an incredibly rich andRead 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: Students, Summerstudents

Just a Student I am a physics student who has delved into my first theoretical physics internship. From this transition of student to scientist, I’ve gained some insights that have shifted my view on academia and the world of scientific research. Recently, I’ve learned a lot about what truly makes a scientist, or rather, the difference in attitude from that of a student. As an undergraduate student at University of Toronto, the topics I’ve learned have only been applied in the form of tests and exams. Ultimately, it’s when you leave the lecture halls and enter real research where you can begin to shift yourRead 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 →