Randomly Mixed Atoms Arranged in Rows and Columns for Sustainable Catalysis

04-Aug-2026 - The energy system of the future will require sustainable catalysts that, for example, enable the efficient production of green hydrogen. Materials consisting of mixtures of five chemical elements show great promise for enabling ideal catalysts in the future. Researchers at the DFG Collaborative ...

Bacteria convert uranium into a stable chemical compound

Potential risk to humans and environment reduced

13-Jul-2026 - The radioactive heavy metal uranium is usually found in the soil in a mineral-bound form but can be converted into soluble forms by environmental influences or mining activities. If it enters the environment, this poses a problem due to its toxic properties. Now, researchers at the ...

Magnetic imaging: Micro-flowers increase the local magnetic field

Micrometer-size magnetic flux concentrators increase the magnetic field range available in magnetic microscopy for the investigation of magnetic nanostructures

08-Jul-2026 - Materials with magnetic nanostructures have many potential applications such as in spintronics. To explore such materials, nanoscale magnetic-sensitive imaging techniques are very useful, but up to now only weak magnetic fields could be applied during the imaging process. Now an international ...

Microscopy at the Space-Time Limit

Ultrafast scanning tunneling microscopy reaches the quantum mechanical space-time limit for the first time: Key to controlling chemical reactions?

07-Jul-2026 - Werner Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle describes one of the most intriguing features of quantum physics: certain pairs of physical quantities describing a particle, such as position and momentum, cannot simultaneously be determined with arbitrary precision—not because of imprecise ...

Making biomolecules glow: new dye solves problem

Combating unwanted signals in microscopy: method ensures just labelled biological molecules glow

22-May-2026 - Biomolecules, also known as organic molecules, include sugars, proteins and lipids and are the building blocks of all life. They play a role in the structure and metabolism of all living organisms. To make them visible under a microscope, researchers use special dyes to make them glow. A research ...

Deep brines in northern Germany could be among Europe's largest lithium resources

Project RoLiXX aims to develop extraction methods that work even under high-salinity conditions

21-Apr-2026 - In the joint project RoLiXX ("The Rotliegend as a lithium resource in the North German Basin - from EXploration to EXtraction"), researchers are investigating whether lithium can be extracted sustainably and economically from very saline deep waters in deep geological layers of the North German ...

Molecular chains with bite: breakthrough achieved in polymer research

Halogen-free process produces cleanest PPP synthesis ever

17-Mar-2026 - The longest chains of the conductive polymer poly(p-phenylene) (PPP) produced to date are almost one micrometre (thousandth of a millimetre) long - almost an order of magnitude longer than previously possible. A research team from chemistry and physics led by Prof. Dr. Michael Gottfried from the ...

Formic acid molecule trembles into the third dimension

The quantum trembling: Why there are no truly flat molecules

24-Feb-2026 - Formic acid is considered a molecule in which all atoms lie in a single plane. A research team at Goethe University, together with cooperation partners, has now demonstrated experimentally that the atoms in formic acid jitter out of this plane continuously on a minimal scale. As a result, the ...

MXene for energy storage: More versatile than expected

Chemical states of titanium atoms on MXene flake surfaces mapped for the first time using in situ X-ray microscopy

10-Feb-2026 - MXene materials are promising candidates for a new energy storage technology. However, the processes by which the charge storage takes place were not yet fully understood. A team at HZB has examined, for the first time, individual MXene flakes to explore these processes in detail. Using the in ...

A quantum leap in optical microscopy

Researchers from Regensburg and Birmingham overcome a fundamental limitation of optical microscopy

03-Feb-2026 - From smartphone cameras to space telescopes, the desire to see ever finer detail has driven technological progress. Yet as we probe smaller and smaller length scales, we encounter a fundamental boundary set by light itself. Because light behaves as a wave, it cannot be focused arbitrarily sharply ...