news 2023

China covers its demand for lithium, cobalt and nickel for batteries by recycling, ahead of Europe and the USA. With the increasing production of batteries for electric vehicles, the demand for the necessary raw materials is also rising. In view of the supply risks, environmental problems and precarious working conditions associated with the extraction and transportation of these raw materials, the recycling of battery materials has become an important topic in science, politics and industry.

Research on the electrification of agricultural machinery The special requirements placed on trucks and agricultural machinery often make it difficult for engineers to bring them into the electric age. At the Agritechnica agricultural machinery fair researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) are now showing what a modular development kit for electric tractors can look like.

Researchers from the Universities of Freiburg and Ulm have developed a monolithically integrated photo battery using organic materials. Networked intelligent devices and sensors can improve the energy efficiency of consumer products and buildings by monitoring their consumption in real time. Miniature devices like these being developed under the concept of the Internet of Things require energy sources that are as compact as possible in order to function autonomously.

A new algorithm mines material libraries up to four times faster than before. It is based on machine learning . Researchers are working flat out to find new materials for future technologies on which the energy transition depends, for example as electrocatalysts. Due to their versatile properties, materials consisting of five or more elements are of particular interest.

Quantum sensors make microscale NMR spectroscopy possible A miniature magnetic resonance Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is an important imaging method in research which can be used to visualize tissue and structures without damaging them. The technique is better known from the medical field as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), where the patient is moved into a bore of a large magnet on a table.

Physicists investigate 2D materials with very special properties Postdoc Dr. Nihit Saigal, a member of Prof. Ursula Wurstbauer's team at Münster University's Institute of Physics, has got everything ready in the laboratory to produce an ultra-thin, two-dimensional material - a silver-coloured crystal of molybdenum disulphide, a viscoelastic polymer film.

Organic dyes accelerate transport of buffered solar energy The sun sends enormous amounts of energy to the earth. Nevertheless, some of it is lost in solar cells. This is an obstacle in the use of organic solar cells, especially for those viable in innovative applications. A key factor in increasing their performance: Improved transport of the solar energy stored within the material.

Researchers from the Department of Physics at Universität Hamburg, observed a quantum state that was theoretically predicted more than 50 years ago by Japanese theoreticians but so far eluded detection. By tailoring an artificial atom on the surface of a superconductor, the researchers succeeded in pairing the electrons of the so-called quantum dot, thereby inducing the smallest possible version of a superconductor.

Researchers have created a quantum superposition state in a semiconductor nanostructure that might serve as a basis for quantum computing. The trick: two optical laser pulses that act as a single terahertz laser pulse. A German-Chinese research team has successfully created a quantum bit in a semiconductor nanostructure.

It is impossible to imagine everyday life without polymers. However, they represent only a small section of the huge number of polymers that could theoretically exist. Christopher Kuenneth at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, together with research partners in Atlanta, USA, has now developed a digital system that promises extraordinarily high economic, technological and ecological benefits: From around 100 million theoretically possible polymers, it can filter out at unprecedented speed precisely those materials that are most suitable for targeted applications.

Researchers from the Department of Physics and the Institute for Photonic Quantum Systems (PhoQS) in Paderborn have successfully produced quantum dots - nanoscopic structures in which the quantum properties of matter come into play - that glow in the optical C-band at a wavelength between 1530 and 1565 nanometers as part of a project funded within the Collaborative Research Center/TRR 142.

Research team develops organic redox polymer as positive electrode material for aluminium-ion batteries Aluminium-ion batteries are seen as a promising alternative to conventional batteries that use scarce and difficult-to-recycle raw materials such as lithium. This is because aluminium is one of the most common elements in the Earth's crust, is easier to recycle, and is also safer and less expensive than lithium.

Either 1 or 0. Either current flows or it does not. In electronics, everything is controlled via the binary system. Electrons already generate information quite fast and well, pass them on and take over various switching functions. But it can be done even faster. Paul Herrmann and Sebastian Klimmer from the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena have proven that.

The Collaborative Research Centre ToCoTronics in condensed matter physics will be extended for four more years. The German Research Foundation is funding it with 12 million euros. Topological materials are intensively investigated in the world. This boom started at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg, where the physics professor Laurens Molenkamp realized the first topological insulator in 2007.

Glass is a very special material: it can be produced in almost unlimited variety from compounds of almost all'elements of the periodic table. The only prerequisite is that the components can be melted together and that the melt is then cooled quickly enough. In the process, the liquid mixture solidifies and forms a glass.

When fossil fuels, but also biofuels, are burned, large amounts of the energy are lost as waste heat. Thermoelectric materials could convert this heat into electricity, but they are not yet efficient enough for technical application. A team from the Max Planck Institut für Eisenforschung has now increased the efficiency of a thermoelectric material by elucidating the influence of the microstructure on the material and optimizing the material's properties by adding titanium.

Millions in funding for collaborative project: focus on sustainability and circular economy The recycling of lithium-ion batteries is playing an increasingly important role in battery research not only because of its environmental sustainability, but also because of the shortage of raw materials. While the number of production facilities is increasing in Germany and Europe, there is a lack of natural deposits of numerous starting materials for battery cell production.

The cornerstone for 1000-fold improvement in communication rates for bridging long distances. Diamond is of great importance for future technologies such as the quantum internet. Special defect centers can be used as quantum bits (qubits) and emit single photons. To enable data transmission with practicable communication rates over long distances in the quantum network, all photons must be collected in optical fibers and transmitted without being lost.

Researchers from Paderborn University, the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRiM),Italy's national metrology institute, the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, and the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), National Metrology Institute of Germany, have studied sequential infiltration synthesis in nanostructured polymers.

Scientists at the Universities of Würzburg and Ottawa have solved the decades-old problem of distinguishing between single and multiple light excitations. They present their new method in the journal Nature. The construction of the first laser in 1960 ushered in commercial applications with light that have become an integral part of our everyday lives.