Foundation stone laying ceremony for an energy research laboratory on Wannsee campus
Prof. Dr. Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla, Prof. Dr. Roel van de Krol, Dirk Mielke, Dr. Catherine Dubourdieu andMonica Wurfbaum (from left to right). Photo: HZB/J. Bierbaum
A milestone has been reached in the expansion of energy materials research at the Lise-Meitner Campus: on 23 March 2017, the celebration was held for laying the foundation stone of a laboratory building that will offer a multitude of methods for synthesising and characterising energy materials.
Construction has been ongoing since the beginning of the year: In Wannsee, a new building is being built for energy research in the scope of the Helmholtz Energy Materials Foundry (HEMF). It is expected to be completed already in December 2017. Numerous employees and construction partners celebrated the laying of the foundation stone for the flexibly usable laboratory complex together with the scientific project manager and HZB management. It has two storeys, on each of which 135 square-metre spaces will be available for physical chemistry. The Institute for Functional Oxides for Energy Efficient Information Technologies (EM-IFOX) will occupy the ground floor.
Prof. Dr. Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla stressed: “The construction of the new laboratory building is an important future project for the Wannsee campus, and perfectly complements the existing research facilities for energy materials research. With it, we are in particular expanding our portfolio in material synthesis. This is crucial prerequisite for targetedly developing energy materials with useful functions and properties.”
The HZB project manager for the Helmholtz Energy Materials Foundry, Prof. Dr. Roel van de Krol, explained that the laboratory is for developing materials and applications for energy-efficient IT, and materials for the conversion of carbon dioxide into valuable hydrocarbons for the chemicals industry. “These topics are not only very exciting and challenging research fields; they also count among the key problems that must be solved for the transition to an efficient and climate-friendly energy supply of the future.”
In EM-IFOX, institute director Dr. Catherine Dubourdieu and her team will be researching together on metal oxides. These materials have a broad spectrum of electric, magnetic, optical and mechanical properties. “These tremendously useful properties offer an enormous potential for developing new components that are extremely efficient and possess new functions. Our aim is to develop these functional oxides further to cover a greater range of applications. We want them to become as versatile as the widespread semiconductor heterostructures are today,” says Dr. Catherine Dubourdieu.
What exactly Mrs. has planned, and what synthesis and characterisation capabilities the laboratory will have, is explained here.
- CIGS-perovskite tandem cell achieves record efficiency of 25.5 %A Berlin-based team from HZB and Center for the Science of Materials Berlin (CSMB) at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin has set a new record for a tandem solar cell. Using a combination of a CIGS semiconductor layer and perovskite, along with several optimised intermediate layers, they were able to convert 25.5% of sunlight into electrical energy. The previous record for this combination of materials and this size of cell stood at 24.6%. The new record has been certified and is visible in the prestigious Solar Cell Efficiency Tables (the "Green Tables"), which serve as the definitive ledger for the global photovoltaic community.
- Perovskite solar cells: Predictions of long-term stabilityReliable statements about the long-term stability of perovskite solar cells are still difficult to make. However, a new study by Dr Carolin Ulbrich’s team, published in the renowned journal Joule, highlights which methods are useful for this purpose and identifies areas where further research is needed.
- AI agents deliver results – but do they reason scientifically?A research team co-led by Kevin Maik Jablonka from the Helmholtz Institute for Polymers in Energy Applications Jena (HIPOLE Jena) and N. M. Anoop Krishnan from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi has developed Corral, a new benchmark for AI agents in science. The preprint “AI scientists produce results without reasoning scientifically” has been published on arXiv (https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.18805). The analysis shows that current systems can execute scientific workflows and deliver results; however, they often do not follow the basic principles of scientific testing and reasoning.