The new technology is already the basis for a new spinoff company

29-Aug-2022

As the world builds out ever larger installations of wind and solar power systems, the need is growing fast for economical, large-scale backup systems to provide power when the sun is down and the air is calm. Today’s lithium-ion batteries are still too expensive for most such applications, and ...

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Energy conversion thanks to disorder

06-Jul-2022

Researchers at TU Wien have developed a new concept to convert thermal energy into electrical energy more efficiently. Energy losses can thus be minimised. A lot of heat gets lost during the conversion of energy. Estimates even put it at more than 70%. However, in thermoelectric materials, such ...

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“This discovery was literally a case of serendipity”

04-Mar-2022

Chemists at the University of Jena, Germany have set a new record, having discovered a fluorescent aluminium complex with the highest quantum yield known to date. For virtually every photon absorbed by the substance, a photon is emitted. This could be of benefit in applications such as LED ...

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“We don’t need any energy input, and it bubbles hydrogen like crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it”

22-Feb-2022

Aluminum is a highly reactive metal that can strip oxygen from water molecules to generate hydrogen gas. Its widespread use in products that get wet poses no danger because aluminum instantly reacts with air to acquire a coating of aluminum oxide, which blocks further reactions. For years, ...

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The energy is not stored in the form of increased heat but in the form of a chemical state

05-Oct-2021

In Germany, 55 percent of final energy consumption goes towards heating and cooling. However, a lot of heat dissipates unused because it is not generated as and when required. Thermal storage using zeolite material allows heat to be stored for long periods of time without losing any. Fraunhofer ...

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New ways to modify the structure of aluminium alloys for improving their performance

08-Jul-2020

Currently, low-alloy aluminium is widely used in electrical engineering and machine building. At the same time, it should be noted that modern electrical engineering places very high and in some cases mutually exclusive requirements to aluminium alloys. For example, conductive aluminium alloys ...

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Scientists develop self-cleaning aluminium surface

28-May-2020

A project team of Technische Universität Dresden and the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS structured an aluminium plate with a laser process in such a way that water droplets no longer adhere and dirt particles can be removed from the surface - completely without chemical ...

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24-Feb-2020

In the battery of the future, solids will replace the currently used electrolyte solutions. A team of scientists at LMU has now developed a series of new sodium ion conductors. The secret of the best material in the series lies in the exact mixing of the ingredients. The days of conventional ...

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18-Dec-2019

A Chinese-German research cooperation involving the University of Augsburg has demonstrated properties in a metal that cannot be explained by the standard theory. The results were obtained on a special metallic compound with unusual magnetic characteristics – scientists call it mag-netic ...

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Heterometallic copper-aluminum super atom discovered

27-Sep-2018

On the outside, the cluster made of 55 copper and aluminum atoms looks like a crystal, but chemically it has the properties of an atom. The heterometallic superatom which chemists of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have created provides the prerequisites for developing new, more ...

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