Prof. Dr. Yan Lu: Developing new types of batteries sustainably
Since 2009, Yan Lu is a researcher at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin. In 2017, she became a professor at the University of Potsdam and at HZB. In addition to her work at the HZB, she is now also a professor at the University of Jena. © M. Setzpfandt / HZB
Yan Lu is appointed new Professor of Hybrid Materials for Electrochemical Energy Storage and Conversion at Friedrich Schiller University Jena together with HZB. Congratulations!
“Conventional lithium-ion batteries are very powerful, but also expensive, as they require metals such as nickel and cobalt in addition to lithium,” says chemist Prof Dr Yan Lu. “That’s why I’m researching more sustainable alternatives, such as lithium-sulphur batteries and batteries based on hybrid materials,” explains the 47-year-old scientist, who is working at Friedrich Schiller University Jena since this semester. Her work combines various areas of expertise: In order to make energy available electrochemically, she combines organic and inorganic chemistry, for example, and also draws on research methods from biochemistry.
As part of her joint appointment with Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), where she continues to head the Institute for Electrochemical Energy Storage, the new professor is also co-director of the Helmholtz Institute for Polymers in Energy Applications Jena (HIPOLE Jena), which has been founded in 2023 in Jena by the university and HZB.
About Yan LuAfter studying chemistry in Shanghai, Yan Lu completed her doctorate at TU Dresden and then conducted research first in Bayreuth and from 2009 at the Helmholtz Centre Berlin. In 2017, she became a professor at the University of Potsdam and at HZB. In addition to her work at the Helmholtz Centre, she has also been Professor of Hybrid Materials for Electrochemical Energy Storage and Conversion at the University of Jena since the winter semester 2023/24.
- Ultrafast demagnetisation - Thinner iron, stronger effectThe thinner an iron film, the more easily it can be demagnetised by a laser pulse. Researchers at the University of Duisburg-Essen, working with Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin and other partners, have discovered why: the key lies in the magnetic order at the material's interfaces. In the long term, these findings could contribute to the development of new technologies for magnetic data storage. The results have been published in the scientific journal Advanced Science.
- Blind spot for the arrangement of atomsArtificial intelligence is increasingly being used to predict the properties of new materials. A research team from Jena and the United States now shows in a study published in the journal Nature Computational Science that when language models are used for this purpose, they reliably identify which types of atoms a material contains. However, they make insufficient use of information about how those atoms are arranged in space. Neither larger models nor additional training data resolve this weakness. For material properties that depend strongly on structure, AI models specifically designed to process spatial relationships are therefore the more reliable choice. (DOI: 10.1038/s43588-026-01045-2)
- Patterns of polar vortices in lead-free superlattices on siliconA team at HZB has, for the first time, reported polar vortices in (BaTiO3/SrTiO3)10 superlattices on silicon. These results expand the range of materials and substrates on which polar topological textures can occur and open up new options for incorporating complex ferroelectric states into silicon-based technologies.