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.
- Long-term stability for perovskite solar cells: a big step forwardPerovskite solar cells are inexpensive to produce and generate a high amount of electric power per surface area. However, they are not yet stable enough, losing efficiency more rapidly than the silicon market standard. Now, an international team led by Prof. Dr. Antonio Abate has dramatically increased their stability by applying a novel coating to the interface between the surface of the perovskite and the top contact layer. This has even boosted efficiency to almost 27%, which represents the state-of-the-art. After 1,200 hours of continuous operation under standard illumination, no decrease in efficiency was observed. The study involved research teams from China, Italy, Switzerland and Germany and has been published in Nature Photonics.
- Energy of charge carrier pairs in cuprate compoundsHigh-temperature superconductivity is still not fully understood. Now, an international research team at BESSY II has measured the energy of charge carrier pairs in undoped La₂CuO₄. Their findings revealed that the interaction energies within the potentially superconducting copper oxide layers are significantly lower than those in the insulating lanthanum oxide layers. These results contribute to a better understanding of high-temperature superconductivity and could also be relevant for research into other functional materials.
- Electrocatalysis with dual functionality – an overviewHybrid electrocatalysts can produce green hydrogen, for example, and valuable organic compounds simultaneously. This promises economically viable applications. However, the complex catalytic reactions involved in producing organic compounds are not yet fully understood. Modern X-ray methods at synchrotron sources such as BESSY II, enable catalyst materials and the reactions occurring on their surfaces to be analysed in real time, in situ and under real operating conditions. This provides insights that can be used for targeted optimisation. A team has now published an overview of the current state of knowledge in Nature Reviews Chemistry.