Theory meets practice – We’re heading back to HTW Berlin!
The HZB’s BIPV consultancy office (BAIP) is once again coordinating and delivering the lecture series “Building-Integrated Photovoltaics”.
How can solar panels be integrated into architecture in an aesthetically pleasing and efficient way? This is precisely what our colleagues Samira Aden, Thorsten Kühn and Niklas Albinius, together with Rutger Schlatmann, will be demonstrating to Master’s students in Renewable Energy at the Berlin University of Applied Sciences during the coming summer semester.
As a BIPV consulting office, our aim is to break down barriers and disseminate knowledge. For the second time, we are shaping the summer semester with our seminar ‘Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV)’, enabling us to pass on our practical knowledge to the next generation of aspiring engineers.
Together with the students, we will delve deep into the world of solar building envelopes. In doing so, the students will work on construction project at the HZB and, in parallel with the actual planning, develop their own holistic BIPV concepts in their semester projects – ranging from technical yield simulation and building regulations checks to economic life-cycle analysis.
We are looking forward to a sunny summer semester!
- Does African Architecture exist?The world’s first Pan-African Architecture Biennale took place this September in Nairobi, Kenya. People from the worlds of architecture, art, academia and politics from 54 African countries and the diaspora had travelled to Nairobi to exchange ideas on traditional and contemporary building methods, materials, experiences and projects. Samira Aden co-organised this biennial as lead curator. We spoke to her about it.
- Nanosilver as an electrocatalyst for CO₂ reductionVia electrolysis, CO2 can be reduced to CO, a raw material for further chemical products such as fuels. Within the GreenQuest Project, an internation team led by HZB chemist Prashanth Menezes has now systematically investigated catalyst layers made of silver nanoparticles, varying both the size of the particles and their density. The best yield was achieved with nanoparticles with diameters of around 10 nm, which were loosely distributed. Furthermore, they demonstrated how the economic efficiency of the electrochemical cell can be enhanced by integrating an additional chemical reaction at the anode, enabling the simultaneous production of a valuable formic acid, hydrogen, and CO in one device.
- Spin waves inside a nano-oscillator imaged for the first timeFor the first time, researchers have directly imaged the magnetisation dynamics inside a spin Hall nano-oscillator — a nanoscale device that converts direct current into tunable microwave signals and is a promising building block for energy-efficient wireless communication and brain-inspired computing. A Swedish–German team led by the University of Gothenburg and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) achieved this using time-resolved scanning transmission X-ray microscopy at the MAXYMUS instrument at BESSY II. The results, now published in Advanced Materials, reveal spin-wave features that had escaped previous, indirect measurement techniques.