Curious Mind Award for Michelle Browne
Michelle Browne (2. f. l.) receives the Curious Mind Award. © Tamina-Florentine Zuch for manager magazin
On Thursday, 12 October 2023, Michelle Browne received a prestigious award in Hamburg: The "Curious Mind Award" in the category "Mobility, Energy and Sustainable Business" by manager magazin.
The young chemist is researching novel material systems as catalysts for green hydrogen through electrolysis. Among other achievements, Michelle Browne has designed a larger electrolysis cell that can be produced using a 3D printer. This device allows to examine many processes under more realistic conditions than with the tiny “shot-glass” cells commonly used in the laboratory. The print data is available in open access, benefiting research groups worldwide.
Michelle Browne completed her PhD at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. After postdoctoral positions in Belfast, Prague and London, she is now building up her own research group at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin. For her innovative research, she was also awarded the “L’Oréal-and Unesco Women in Science – Rising talents” Award 2021. manager magazin will publish a feature and a video on Michelle Browne and her work.
- Battery research: visualisation of aging processes operandoLithium button cells with electrodes made of nickel-manganese-cobalt oxides (NMC) are very powerful. Unfortunately, their capacity decreases over time. Now, for the first time, a team has used a non-destructive method to observe how the elemental composition of the individual layers in a button cell changes during charging cycles. The study, now published in the journal Small, involved teams from the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), the University of Münster, researchers from the SyncLab research group at HZB and the BLiX laboratory at the Technical University of Berlin. Measurements were carried out in the BLiX laboratory and at the BESSY II synchrotron radiation source.
- 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’.