Helmholtz Innovation Labs: HySPRINT at HZB
HZB will be setting up the new Helmholtz HySPRINT Innovation Lab for jointly developing new combinations of materials and processes in energy applications with commercial partners. Silicon and metal-organic perovskite crystals will be the centre point of the Lab’s work. The Helmholtz Association is supporting the project for the next five years with 1.9 million Euros from its Initiative and Networking Fund, with additional contributions from HZB itself as well as from industry.
The Helmholtz Association is supporting a total of seven Helmholtz Innovation Labs in order to strengthen the transfer of research results to the applications domain. The Association is making about twelve million Euros available over the next five years for setting up and operating the Innovation Labs.
The HZB proposal was selected from a field of 27 competing applications. HySPRINT stands for “Hybrid Silicon Perovskite Research, Integration & Novel Technologies”. It will focus on hybrid materials and components based on silicon and perovskite crystals able to be employed for energy conversion in photovoltaics as well as for solar hydrogen production.
“We intend to further develop silicon hybrid technology, liquid-phase crystallisation of silicon, nano-print lithography as well as the implementation of prototypes by means of 3D techniques for microcontacts in cooperation with industrial partners – and demonstrate the potential for industrial-scale production”, says Professor Bernd Rech from the HZB Institute for Silicon Photovoltaics.
The Innovation Lab will be set up as a core lab at HZB and will work closely with the HZB Institute PVcomB. Professor Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla, Scientific Director of HZB poitbs out: “HySPRINT will establish itself as a creative pillar of Technology Transfer at HZB and within the Helmholtz Association.”
- BESSY II: Phosphorous chains – a 1D material with 1D electronic propertiesFor the first time, a team at BESSY II has succeeded in demonstrating the one-dimensional electronic properties of a material through a highly refined experimental process. The samples consisted of short chains of phosphorus atoms that self-organise at specific angles on a silver substrate. Through sophisticated analysis, the team was able to disentangle the contributions of these differently aligned chains. This revealed that the electronic properties of each chain are indeed one-dimensional. Calculations predict an exciting phase transition to be expected as soon as these chains are more closely packed. While material consisting of individual chains with longer distances is semiconducting, a very dense chain structure would be metallic.
- Did marine life in the palaeocene use a compass?Some ancient marine organisms produced mysterious magnetic particles of unusually large size, which can now be found as fossils in marine sediments. An international team has succeeded in mapping the magnetic domains on one of such ‘giant magnetofossils’ using a sophisticated method at the Diamond X-ray source. Their analysis shows that these particles could have allowed these organisms to sense tiny variations in both the direction and intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field, enabling them to geolocate themselves and navigate across the ocean. The method offers a powerful tool for magnetically testing whether putative biological iron oxide particles in Mars samples have a biogenic origin.
- What vibrating molecules might reveal about cell biologyInfrared vibrational spectroscopy at BESSY II can be used to create high-resolution maps of molecules inside live cells and cell organelles in native aqueous environment, according to a new study by a team from HZB and Humboldt University in Berlin. Nano-IR spectroscopy with s-SNOM at the IRIS beamline is now suitable for examining tiny biological samples in liquid medium in the nanometre range and generating infrared images of molecular vibrations with nanometre resolution. It is even possible to obtain 3D information. To test the method, the team grew fibroblasts on a highly transparent SiC membrane and examined them in vivo. This method will provide new insights into cell biology.