With nanoparticles from Nairobi to Berlin
© private
preparing the samples for the analysis of metal nanoparticles. © private
In April, Nancy Ochiba was a guest at HZB in Berlin doing research on nanoparticles. “I made good use of the time,” says the young chemist from Nairobi, Kenya. First she took part in the Photon School for young scientists, then she joined the lab at the Institute for Solar Fuels as a guest researcher. “Here I can benefit from technology that is not available to me at the Kenya University of Technology. For example, I have now examined my samples under a scanning electron microscope.”
Research for a better future
Nancy is in the first year of her PhD. What motivates her? She wants to help people live better. “Currently, about 75% of households in Kenya still cook with firewood or paraffin,” Nancy says. “However, the smoke is unhealthy, and many women and children suffer from respiratory diseases.” Moreover, wood is hard to find and paraffin is expensive, apart from the climate-damaging effect of burning fossil resources.
Nancy is therefore investigating special catalysts to electrochemically produce a “green” fuel from CO2 and solar energy, such as methane or propane. The idea sounds appealing: the climate-damaging greenhouse gas CO2, which is produced when oil, gas or coal is burned, could be recycled into a new fuel. But the process is complex: the reaction of CO2 with water in an electrolyser requires energy, which in principle can be supplied by the sun – and special catalysts that ensure that the desired compounds are formed from water and CO2. The energy balance of these reactions is currently not yet convincing. But many processes would benefit from the development of suitable catalysts.
Catalyst research at BESSY
Nancy synthesises nanoparticles of two different metals, copper-nickel, copper-zinc or even copper-cobalt. These metal nanoparticles have very large surface areas which, depending on their nature, accelerate the desired chemical reactions. “It’s still pretty basic research,” says Nancy. But it’s important to take the first steps; these catalysts are very versatile.
Nancy will also be attending to the user meeting in June 2023. “I want to apply for beam time at BESSY II for operando studies of my nanoparticles, so I can see how they favor specific chemical reactions.” When Nancy is not working in the lab, she enjoys walking around Berlin: “I especially like the old sites of the city,” she says. “And that special sausage, the one with the sauce, I think it’s called currywurst.”
This blogpost is part of a series on our cooperation with scientists from Kenya.
- Marcel Risch has been appointed Professor at the Freie Universität BerlinMarcel Risch was appointed to a W2-S professorship in the Department of Physics at Freie Universität Berlin in August 2026. His research group has been transformed into the department 'Mechanisms of Sustainable Electrocatalysis'. Risch investigates the fundamental mechanisms of electrocatalytic reactions and, on this basis, develops knowledge- and data-driven strategies to improve electrocatalysts for the sustainable production of hydrogen, fuels and chemicals.
- New technique could make MRI more preciseA team of researchers at the University of Stuttgart and HZB has developed a new method that could make MRI even more precise by eliminating “dead time,” a key limiting factor in the measurement process, thereby enabling the detection of signals that are lost using conventional methods. This method opens up new possibilities for medical diagnostics and non-destructive materials testing. The research team presents the new approach in Science Advances.
- New method shows how molecular switches are influenced by their neighborsResearchers at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Helmholtz Centre Berlin (HZB) have, for the first time, been able to directly observe how the environment surrounding a molecular switch influences its electronic structure. Molecular switches are molecules that can be switched between two states by external influences such as changes in temperature—similar to a switch with the positions »On« and »Off«. Such molecules are being investigated as potential building blocks for future data storage devices or sensor materials. Using magnetic-field-dependent terahertz spectroscopy, the researchers have now, for the first time, been able to distinguish whether neighbouring molecules in a material are in the same or different states. The results have been published in the journal »Angewandte Chemie International Edition«.