How lab-made catalysts can help to get a grip on difficult greenhouse gases

09-Nov-2023 - Natural gas consists of light hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane. Such gases are more potent greenhouse gases than CO2, are constantly released into the atmosphere from natural gas wells, and are more difficult to store than, for example, their corresponding alcohols (methanol and ethanol, ...

Tailored electron pulses for improved electron microscopy

Interplay of free electrons

16-Oct-2023 - Electron microscopes provide unique vistas of nanoscale structures, but their resolution is limited by the mutual repulsion of electrons. Researchers in Göttingen have now succeeded in precisely measuring the influence of these interactions. They discovered an “energetic fingerprint” in which the ...

Simply blue

New material concept allows more cost-effective production of blue organic light-emitting diodes

14-Sep-2023 - Blue organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), which can be used in smartphones, televisions or other devices, are still difficult to manufacture today. A team of researchers led by Gert-Jan Wetzelaer of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research has now developed a new material concept that ...

Unveiling challenges in green hydrogen production

International researcher team reveals adverse effects of hydrogen on catalysts

11-Sep-2023 - The quest for hydrogen as a clean and sustainable energy source has gained momentum. To produce green hydrogen, water must be split into oxygen and hydrogen. This water splitting process is facilitated by electrocatalysts that enhance the chemical reaction rate. Ideally, a catalyst is neither ...

Electricity driving life

Using a metabolic pathway, energy-rich resources can be produced via the power of electricity

18-Aug-2023 - When nature performs chemical reactions to create energy-rich compounds from simple molecules, it requires energy. So far, it has not been possible to use human-made electricity to drive these biochemical processes. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg ...

Artificial intelligence designs advanced materials

Scientists of the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung pioneer new machine learning model for corrosion-resistant alloy design

15-Aug-2023 - In a world where annual economic losses from corrosion surpass 2.5 trillion US Dollars, the quest for corrosion-resistant alloys and protective coatings is unbroken. Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly pivotal role in designing new alloys. Yet, the predictive power of AI ...

Seeing light elements in a grain boundary: A further step in unravelling materials’ properties down to the atomic scale

Scientists of the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung develop a workflow and code to characterize defects in steels

09-Aug-2023 - To develop advanced materials, a deep understanding of their underlying microstructure and chemistry is necessary. Knowing how defects influence the interplay between microstructure and chemical composition is crucial, as they are the entry gate for material’s failure due to corrosion or crack ...

Molecular highway for electrons in organic light-emitting diodes

New material concept potentially allows efficient blue OLEDs with strongly simplified structure

27-Jul-2023 - Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are now widely used. For use in displays, blue OLEDs are additionally required to supplement the primary colours red and green. Especially in blue OLEDs, impurities give rise to strong electrical losses, which could be partly circumvented by using highly ...

Efficient discovery of improved energy materials by a new AI-guided workflow

These can help alleviate the ongoing energy crisis

21-Jul-2023 - Scientists of the NOMAD Laboratory at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society recently proposed a workflow that can dramatically accelerate the search for novel materials with improved properties. They demonstrated the power of the approach by identifying more than 50 strongly ...

New Discovery: Toward sugar origami

Folded carbohydrates could open up completely new perspectives in biomedicine and materials science

06-Jul-2023 - Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) have designed a carbohydrate sequence capable of folding into a stable secondary structure. Until now, such self-folding biopolymers had only been developed for DNA and proteins, and sugars were previously considered too ...