Uppsala Berlin Joint Laboratory “Our willingness to cooperate is our strength”
Great political interest for the new Uppsala Berlin Joint Laboratory (UBjL): On the 4th of November, Sweden’s ambassador in Germany, Dr. Lars Danielsson, came personally to the HZB where the UBjL is established for the inauguration of the joint project.
“Many parts of the world are currently regarded as more dynamic than Europe,” Dr. Danielsson said in his opening speech: “But we have great strengths – namely our skill and our willingness to cooperate.” These strengths, the ambassador continued, can be seen clearly in the UBjL: “Such excellent joint research projects lead to results that will bring great benefits to society, our children and our grandchildren.” Dr. Danielsson then gave the symbolic start signal for two experimental stations that will be supervised by the Swedish-German workgroup belonging to the UBjL.
The “Uppsala Berlin Joint Laboratory” is headed by Professor Nils Mårtensson, University of Uppsala, and Professor Alexander Föhlisch, Head of the HZB Institute “Methods and Instrumentation for Synchrotron Radiation Research. “We are very proud that Professor Mårtensson has invested resources from this ERC Advanced Grant in the UBjL,” HZB Scientific Director Prof. Dr. Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla said at the opening. This funding, co-financed by the HZB, has allowed the development of worldwide unique study methods for functional materials.
These methods are based on angle-resolved time-of-flight electron spectroscopy (ARTOF) and MHz pulse extraction at BESSY II. The ARTOF instruments were developed in Sweden by the University of Uppsala and the company Scienta-Omicron in close collaboration with the HZB. “The synchrotron source BESSY II delivers pulses with the most suitable time structure worldwide for optimally using the instruments,” said Svante Professor Svante Svensson, who is part of the UBjL team at BESSY II in Berlin. At the UBjL, the researchers can study the state of functional materials at the lowest possible X-ray dosage. Further methods allow detailed detection of the electronic structure of materials.
- Nanosilver as an electrocatalyst for CO₂ reductionVia electrolysis, CO2 can be reduced to CO, a raw material for further chemical products such as fuels. Within the GreenQuest Project, an internation team led by HZB chemist Prashanth Menezes has now systematically investigated catalyst layers made of silver nanoparticles, varying both the size of the particles and their density. The best yield was achieved with nanoparticles with diameters of around 10 nm, which were loosely distributed. Furthermore, they demonstrated how the economic efficiency of the electrochemical cell can be enhanced by integrating an additional chemical reaction at the anode, enabling the simultaneous production of a valuable formic acid, hydrogen, and CO in one device.
- Spin waves inside a nano-oscillator imaged for the first timeFor the first time, researchers have directly imaged the magnetisation dynamics inside a spin Hall nano-oscillator — a nanoscale device that converts direct current into tunable microwave signals and is a promising building block for energy-efficient wireless communication and brain-inspired computing. A Swedish–German team led by the University of Gothenburg and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) achieved this using time-resolved scanning transmission X-ray microscopy at the MAXYMUS instrument at BESSY II. The results, now published in Advanced Materials, reveal spin-wave features that had escaped previous, indirect measurement techniques.
- Joint power instead of duplicate structures:Berlin’s research community is further advancing its research excellence by establishing a high-performance, cross-institutional infrastructure for data and AI. With a joint agreement signed on 18 September 2026, the Berlin University Alliance (BUA), the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) are paving the way for a joint data science and AI centre in Berlin-Dahlem and Adlershof.