Tritium in the quantum sieve

HZDR Team Separates Hydrogen Isotope Mixture for the First Time Using Quantum Effects

07-Aug-2026 - Fusion power plants of the future will not only require extremely hot plasmas and strong magnetic fields but also a fuel cycle in which the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium can be recovered, separated, and reused. Together with partners, a team from HZDR has now demonstrated a highly ...

Material harvests drinking water from air – and cools more efficiently than current systems

Produced on a pilot scale for the first time

15-Jul-2026 - A research team from the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at Kiel University, Germany is developing porous materials specifically designed to harvest water from the air and enable energy-efficient cooling. The team has now succeeded in producing these materials on a larger scale for the first ...

Porous Radical Organic framework improves lithium-sulphur batteries

Significant improvement in service life - Combination of experiments

17-Sep-2025 - A team led by Prof. Yan Lu, HZB, and Prof. Arne Thomas, Technical University of Berlin, has developed a material that enhances the capacity and stability of lithium-sulphur batteries. The material is based on polymers that form a framework with open pores (known as radical-cationic covalent ...

Innovative battery technology from Mülheim

Start-up "Minerva Carbon" receives 1.8 million euros in funding from EXIST Research Transfer I

22-Aug-2025 - The Mülheim-based deep tech start-up Minerva Carbon has received around 1.8 million euros in funding from the EXIST program of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. The project was initiated by Abdu Bilican, a former doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Coal ...

Sunlight in - power out, long after sunset

Solar battery based on porous organic material

30-May-2025 - This material acts like a solar reservoir – storing energy and releasing it as electricity long after sunset. The captured solar energy can thus also be used to supply electricity in the dark. For the first time, it has been possible to combine solar harvesting and long-term energy storage in a ...

New material for efficient separation of Deuterium at elevated Temperatures

21-Mar-2025 - A novel porous material capable of separating deuterium (D2) from hydrogen (H2) at a temperature of 120 K has been introduced. Notably, this temperature exceeds the liquefaction point of natural gas, thus facilitating large-scale industrial applications. This advancement presents an attractive ...

Efficient energy transport through covalent organic frameworks

New prospects for the development of sustainable organic materials in photocatalysis and optoelectronics

16-Jan-2025 - An interdisciplinary research team from LMU, the Technical University of Munich (TUM), and the University of Oxford has employed novel spectroscopic techniques to investigate the diffusion of excited states in so-called covalent organic frameworks (COFs). These modular materials can be adapted ...

Sustainably producible covalent organic networks capture carbon dioxide

"For the first time, a solid-phase synthesis of COFs has been developed that works completely without solvents"

01-Oct-2024 - An international research team led by Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) and the University of Siegen has synthesized a new compound that forms a so-called covalent organic network. The phosphonic acid-based compound is stable and can be used, for example, to store carbon dioxide (CO2), ...

Molecular sponge for the electronics of the future

The properties of the new 2D polymer can be controlled in a targeted and reversible manner

19-Jun-2024 - An international research team led by Dr Florian Auras from Dresden University of Technology (TUD) has succeeded in developing a new type of material in the rather young research field of covalent organic frameworks. The new two-dimensional polymer is characterised by the fact that its properties ...

Freeze casting - a guide to creating hierarchically structured materials

Diverse applications not only in biomedicine, but also in engineering, from new catalysts to highly porous battery electrodes

30-Apr-2024 - Freeze casting is an elegant, cost-effective manufacturing technique to produce highly porous materials with custom-designed hierarchical architectures, well-defined pore orientation, and multifunctional surface structures. Freeze-cast materials are suitable for many applications, from ...