HZB doctoral student won Young Scientist Award
Silvio Künstner (2nd from right) was awarded with five other young researchers at the EUROISMAR 2019 conference. © EUROISMAR 2019
The "Journal of Magnetic Resonance" and the ISMAR (International Society of Magnetic Resonance) awarded Silvio Künstner with a Young Scientist Award for his talk "Rapid Scan EPR-on-a-chip". The doctoral student from the HZB institute for Nanospectroscopy presented current progress in the development of a miniaturized electron spin resonance spectrometer.
Electron spin resonance or electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) provides detailed information about the inner structure of materials, down to an atomic level. This understanding of the material is essential for research in the field of renewable energies, such as efficient solar cells or battery electrodes. Of particular importance are experiments under real process conditions (operando measurements).
The chip-sized miniaturized EPR spectrometer presented by Silvio Künstner is so small that it can be inserted directly inside the sample. This improvement simplifies the handling of operando measurements significantly. In addition, EPR-on-a-chip is far more sensitive than conventional instruments. Next to the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, the University of Stuttgart, the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, as well as the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Bruker (as part of the BMBF's "EPRoC" project) are involved in the research of the miniature spectrometer.
Silvio Künstner received the Young Scientist Award at the ISMAR EUROMAR Joint Conference (25 - 30 August 2019) in Berlin, which was attended by more than 1000 scientists. At the world's largest conference in this field, the HZB was involved as co-organizer. Furthermore, researchers of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin participated with more than ten presentations.
- Porous Radical Organic framework improves lithium-sulphur batteriesA team led by Prof. Yan Lu, HZB, and Prof. Arne Thomas, Technical University of Berlin, has developed a material that enhances the capacity and stability of lithium-sulphur batteries. The material is based on polymers that form a framework with open pores (known as radical-cationic covalent organic frameworks or COFs). Catalytically accelerated reactions take place in these pores, firmly trapping polysulphides, which would shorten the battery life. Some of the experimental analyses were conducted at the BAMline at BESSY II.
- KlarText Prize for Hanna TrzesniowskiThe chemist has been awarded the prestigious KlarText Prize for Science Communication by the Klaus Tschira Foundation.
- Shedding light on insulators: how light pulses unfreeze electronsMetal oxides are abundant in nature and central to technologies such as photocatalysis and photovoltaics. Yet, many suffer from poor electrical conduction, caused by strong repulsion between electrons in neighboring metal atoms. Researchers at HZB and partner institutions have shown that light pulses can temporarily weaken these repulsive forces, lowering the energy required for electrons mobility, inducing a metal-like behavior. This discovery offers a new way to manipulate material properties with light, with high potential to more efficient light-based devices.