Marcus Bär accepts W2 professorship for X-ray spectroscopy in Erlangen-Nuremberg
Marcus Bär, here in EMIL lab at HZB, has accepted a professorship at FAU in South-Germany. © Phil Dera
Prof. Marcus Bär has accepted a professorship for X-ray spectroscopy at the Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU). Bär heads the Department of Interface Design at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB). The new W2 professorship was established in cooperation with HZB and Forschungszentrum Jülich in order to strengthen the Helmholtz-Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg für Renewable Energy (HI ERN). In the future, Bär will also be working on HI ERN research topics at HZB, thereby contributing to the intensification of cooperation.
Marcus Bär studied physics at the University of Potsdam and Environmental Engineering/Renewable Energies at the University of Applied Sciences (FHTW) in Berlin. In 2003 he earned his doctorate in electrical engineering in the field of solar energy research at the Hahn-Meitner-Institut Berlin and at the TU Berlin. Thereafter, Prof. Bär was Emmy-Noether Fellow at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas/USA. He was promoted to an Adjunct Assistant Research Professor at this department in 2006 and to an Assistant Research Professor in 2007. In 2009 he returned to Berlin and became head of the Helmholtz Young Investigator Group "Improving thin-film solar cells by deliberate interface tailoring" at the HZB. Two years later he was appointed professor for photovoltaics at the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg.
Prof. Bär's research interests lie in the field of X-ray spectroscopic investigation of the chemical and electronic structure of energy-conversion materials and structures with a focus on thin-film solar cells. In the future, Prof. Bär wants to establish the infrastructure for in-situ and operando investigations of (photo/electro)catalytic materials, which are also interesting to the HI ERN researchers.
- Does African Architecture exist?The world’s first Pan-African Architecture Biennale took place this September in Nairobi, Kenya. People from the worlds of architecture, art, academia and politics from 54 African countries and the diaspora had travelled to Nairobi to exchange ideas on traditional and contemporary building methods, materials, experiences and projects. Samira Aden co-organised this biennial as lead curator. We spoke to her about it.
- 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.