news 2019

TUM, Oerlikon and Linde develop high-strength lightweight aluminum-based alloy New research alliance for additive manufacturing Together with the Swiss technology group Oerlikon and the industrial gas manufacturer Linde, the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has entered into a research alliance for additive manufacturing (AM).

Physicists create plasma for the first time using nanowires and long-wavelength ultrashort pulse laser Light Physicists at the University of Jena have developed a new method for producing plasma, enabling them to deal with some of the problems that stand in the way of this extremely difficult process.

09/26/2019 Scientists from the University of Würzburg have discovered that spider silk contains an exceptional protein. It generates high bonding strength by making use of an amino acid scientists have hitherto paid little attention to. Why are the lightweight silk threads of web spiders tougher than most other materials' Scientists from the Universities of Würzburg and Mainz teamed up to find answers to this question.

Researchers from the University of Stuttgart, ETH Zurich and the Swiss Empa have presented a method with which wood panels themselves bend into a previously calculated shape in a controlled drying process without mechanical force. The procedure, which contributed to the production of the Urbach Tower at the Remstal Garden Show near Stuttgart, was reported on by the renowned scientific journal Science Advances in its issue of 13 September 2019.

Researchers use methods of the natural sciences to uncover geographic origin of archaeological tin artefacts from the Mediterranean The origin of the tin used in the Bronze Age has long been one of the greatest enigmas in archaeological research. Now researchers from Heidelberg University and the Curt Engelhorn Centre for Archaeometry in Mannheim have solved part of the puzzle.

Physics experiments are often time-consuming and expensive. Sometimes scientists do not realize until the very end that they have been using the wrong calibration for measurements the whole time. What if there were a way to go back in time to the start of the experiment and re-examine the data? Researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), Freie Universität Berlin, and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) hope to create a machine that would make that possible.

A new spectroscopic method now makes it possible to measure and visualise the energetic landscape inside solar cells based on organic materials. It was developed by a research team led by Yana Vaynzof, a physicist at Heidelberg University. This novel visualisation technique enables scientists to study the physical principles of organic photovoltaics with extreme precision and to better understand processes such as energetic losses.

05/23/2019 A great success for Würzburg's physics department: its Collaborative Research Centre was rated as excellent and is now entering its second funding phase. The German Research Foundation is providing 12 million euros for this purpose. In 2015, physicists at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, succeeded in establishing a new Collaborative Research Centre in Würzburg.

The demand for high-energy batteries, in particular for the automotive industry, is increasing, and with it the research interest in battery technologies, which could determine the future market. A promising technology are secondary lithium metal batteries (LMBs), which combine lithium metal as an anode with, for example, cathode materials containing lithium ions.

Most of the people who stroll across the Leonardo campus are unlikely to notice a narrow, single-storey building. The construction in question is about 25 metres long and five metres wide. It is adorned with red and white stripes, has a corrugated iron roof, and is surrounded by a wire mesh fence which is about 1.5 metres high.