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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, Summerstudents

The story began from southern Jordan, specifically from my home city “ Al-Karak ”, where I am actually living and studying. It takes about one hour and 30 minutes to reach the Queen Alia International Airport (QAIA) by car. The challenges began as I reached the check point inside the airport, maybe because it was my first flight alone outside Jordan. Also, the fact that not all the people in Germany speaks English made me a bit afraid. after four hours and twenty minutes, one of my childhood dreams came true, I am in Germany guys! Mercedes, Audi, Volkswagen, and Opel home country! as I gotRead 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, 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: 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: International, Summerstudents

With that statement, I used to begin my day in the blue building of PVcomb… I had the chance to participate with the PV to Fuels Technology group in a project for developing a novel type of hydrogen electrolyzers. These electrolyzers are devices that can use the produced voltage from solar cells to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. Therefore, they can enable us to store the solar energy as a chemical fuel, H2; so that we can use it later whenever there is a demand for electricity regardless of the solar irradiance profile over the day. My work is all about simulating newRead 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 →