Two Humboldt-Fellows join HZB
Humboldt-Fellow Kazuki Morita (left) joined the team of Antonio Abate to advance solar energy research. Qingping Wu (right) works on battery stability with Prof. Yan Lu within his Humboldt-Fellowship. Both will stay until mid 2026. © privat
In 2024, two young scientists joined HZB as Humboldt Fellows. Kazuki Morita joined Prof. Antonio Abate's group and brings his expertise in modelling and data analysis to solar energy research. Qingping Wu is an expert in battery research and works with Prof. Yan Lu on high energy density lithium metal batteries.
“I chose to come to HZB because of its outstanding reputation in materials and energy research and the opportunity to work with Prof. Yan Lu and her team on cutting-edge electrochemical storage technologies,” says Qingping Wu. A chemist by training, Wu completed his PhD in chemical engineering in 2021 and worked as an assistant professor at the Chongqing Institute of Green and Intelligent Technology in China. He joined HZB in August 2024 and will stay until the end of July 2026. His research focuses on aging mechanisms and optimisation of electrode/electrolyte interfaces for high energy density lithium metal batteries.
Kazuki Morita earned his PhD from the Department of Materials, Imperial College London, UK, in 2022. He was a postdoctoral scientist at the Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, USA before joining the team of Prof. Antonio Abate with a Humboldt-Fellowship in May 2024 for the next two years. “I have been reading papers from HZB including ones from Antonio's since I was a PhD student. HZB is an ideal environment to pursue my research,” he says. He will study the stability of tin halide perovskites. “In particular, I will investigate the tin oxidation process using theory and simulations, which is my area of expertise. Prof. Antonio Abate primarily focuses mainly on experiments, so our expertise is complementary,” he says.
- 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.
- Solar cells on moon glass for a future base on the moonFuture settlements on the moon will need energy, which could be supplied by photovoltaics. However, launching material into space is expensive – transporting one kilogram to the moon costs one million euros. But there are also resources on the moon that can be used. A research team led by Dr. Felix Lang of the University of Potsdam and Dr. Stefan Linke of the Technical University of Berlin have now produced the required glass from ‘moon dust’ (regolith) and coated it with perovskite. This could save up to 99 percent of the weight needed to produce PV modules on the moon. The team tested the radiation tolerance of the solar cells at the proton accelerator of the HZB.