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.”
- New instrument at BESSY II: The OÆSE endstation in EMILA new instrument is now available at BESSY II for investigating catalyst materials, battery electrodes and other energy devices under operating conditions: the Operando Absorption and Emission Spectroscopy on EMIL (OÆSE) endstation in the Energy Materials In-situ Laboratory Berlin (EMIL). A team led by Raul Garcia-Diez and Marcus Bär showcases the instrument’s capabilities via a proof-of-concept study on electrodeposited copper.
- Green hydrogen: A cage structured material transforms into a performant catalystClathrates are characterised by a complex cage structure that provides space for guest ions too. Now, for the first time, a team has investigated the suitability of clathrates as catalysts for electrolytic hydrogen production with impressive results: the clathrate sample was even more efficient and robust than currently used nickel-based catalysts. They also found a reason for this enhanced performance. Measurements at BESSY II showed that the clathrates undergo structural changes during the catalytic reaction: the three-dimensional cage structure decays into ultra-thin nanosheets that allow maximum contact with active catalytic centres. The study has been published in the journal ‘Angewandte Chemie’.
- An elegant method for the detection of single spins using photovoltageDiamonds with certain optically active defects can be used as highly sensitive sensors or qubits for quantum computers, where the quantum information is stored in the electron spin state of these colour centres. However, the spin states have to be read out optically, which is often experimentally complex. Now, a team at HZB has developed an elegant method using a photo voltage to detect the individual and local spin states of these defects. This could lead to a much more compact design of quantum sensors.