Chromium replaces rare and expensive noble metals

21-Aug-2023 - Expensive noble metals often play a vital role in illuminating screens or converting solar energy into fuels. Now, chemists at the University of Basel have succeeded in replacing these rare elements with a significantly cheaper metal. In terms of their properties, the new materials are very ...

Luminous Molecules

Chemists smooth the path for new and better light sources

13-Apr-2023 - Twisted molecules play an important role in the development of organic light-emitting diodes. A team of chemists has managed to create these compounds with exactly the three-dimensional structure that they wanted. In so doing, they are smoothing the path for new and better light sources. They ...

From the packet into your food: what harmful substances are in food packaging?

Database of previously undocumented chemicals

01-Jun-2022 - Salad boxes to go, sealed-tray lasagna and apple juice in PET bottles: we encounter packaged food and drink everywhere. A new database shows which packaging contains harmful substances that can be transferred to its contents. It also includes findings from researchers at the University of Basel, ...

Cooling matter from a distance

Potential applications include new types of sensors and quantum networks

04-Feb-2022 - Researchers from the University of Basel have succeeded in forming a control loop consisting of two quantum systems separated by a distance of one meter. Within this loop, one quantum system — a vibrating membrane — is cooled by the other — a cloud of atoms, and the two systems are coupled to one ...

Tracking down microplastics in Antarctica

Microplastics are everywhere, even in the most remote places. Where do these tiny pieces of plastic come from?

01-Dec-2021 - Microplastics are an environmental problem since organisms ingest these tiny particles and can be harmed by them. Even remote regions such as Antarctica are affected. To quantify this form of pollution and find out where the small particles come from, a research team from the Department of ...

A seemingly unattainable energy transition

Researchers have managed to address an unusual energy transition in a semiconductor

29-Nov-2021 - Researchers from Basel and Bochum have succeeded in addressing an apparently unattainable energy transition in an artificial atom using laser light. Making use of the so-called radiative Auger process, they were the first team to specifically excite it. In this process, an electron falls from a ...

Dye-sensitized solar cells: An ironclad future

The holy grail of photovoltaic research is the development of sensitizers using iron

18-Nov-2021 - Solar energy plays an important role in the fight against climate change as a substitute for fossil fuels. Dye-sensitized solar cells promise to be a low-cost supplement to the photovoltaic systems we know today. Their key feature is the dye sensitizers attached to their surface. Researchers at ...

How mercury gets into the sea

Chemical fingerprint reveals origin

04-Oct-2021 - Mercury released into the atmosphere by industry enters the sea and from there makes its way into the food chain. Now, an analysis by the University of Basel has revealed how the harmful substance enters seawater in the first place. This is not primarily via rainfall, as previously assumed, but ...

Manganese could make luminescent materials and the conversion of sunlight more sustainable

06-Aug-2021 - University of Basel researchers have reached an important milestone in their quest to produce more sustainable luminescent materials and catalysts for converting sunlight into other forms of energy. Based on the cheap metal manganese, they have developed a new class of compounds with promising ...

Infrared Held in a Pincer

A NIR-II-emitting chromium complex

23-Jul-2021 - Many applications, from fiber-optic telecommunications to biomedical imaging processes require substances that emit light in the near-infrared range (NIR). A research team in Switzerland has now developed the first chromium complex that emits light in the coveted, longer wavelength NIR-II range. ...