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Public relations
Students' project week during the Easter break 2022
After the successful resumption of the students' project week in the last autumn vacations, the project week for female students will now also take place again at Easter 2022. From April 11-14, a week full of exciting activities awaits female students in grades 8, 9, and 10 in the three projects "Physics in Medicine," "Astronomy - The Colors of the Stars," and "The World of Plasmas." During the project week, participants will have the opportunity to conduct their own research, visit laboratories, interact with scientists and take part in the physics duel - the final event of the project week.
- Registration is possible via spw.physik.rub.de. Here you can also find further information about the projects, contact persons and current regulations.
Career orientation
Student internship in plasma physics
From 31.01. to 04.02. a student of grade Q1 visited us to complete his one-week internship in the context of the school's career orientation. A student internship offers students interested in the field of physics the opportunity to learn more about the field of plasma physics, to gain first experimental laboratory experiences, to get to know the university and its teaching formats better and to further develop their own interests in physics.
During the week, there is 1:1 supervision by undergraduates, graduate students, and research assistants. This week we worked on the sputter coater and evaluated samples obtained from there using a profilometer and transmission measurements and graphing the results using different software. In addition, we looked at the plasma with optical emission spectroscopy to identify different species in the plasma. In addition, Tim was able to look at the different laboratories at the chair and thus get to know several projects of the SFB first hand. Furthermore, he attended two lectures for bachelor students.
During the internship, there are also opportunities for students to solder, work with simulations and analyze data computer-assisted, and get a tour of the campus, depending on their main interests.
Research
P. Grosse publishes recent results on electrochemical CO2 reduction in Nature Communications
A team of researchers from the Department of Interfacial Sciences at FHI Berlin has discovered how changes in the structure of copper catalyst particles during electrochemical CO2 reduction affect their catalytic performance. This should lead to the development of new catalysts that convert the greenhouse gas CO2 into useful chemicals. Researchers around CRC member Philipp Grosse from project B1 published their work in the journal Nature communications.
The could show how the initial number of catalysts particles, their size and density on the support electrode surface is not a reliable indicator of the actual number of particles present during reaction. More importantly, Philipp Gosse and colleagues show that by optimizing the design of the pre-catalyst structures, the structural evolution under working conditions is influenced and thus also their selectivity. This is also important for the electron microscopists.
- More details can be found here.
Working group plasma electrolysis
The Future German and European Energy System – The Role of Hydrogen and its Production, Transport, and Use
A plasma workshop will take place with a special lecture on electrolysis, focusing on future energy scenarios, by Marcel Fiebrandt from Thyssengas on the 25th of February at 10:00.
The EU's Green Deal and the German Federal Climate Protection Act, adapted in 2021, set the ambitious goal of achieving greenhouse gas neutrality by 2050 and 2045, respectively. The necessary transformation of the world's fourth-largest economy toward climate neutrality requires massive adjustments in all sectors and energy carriers as well as in the energy infrastructure. In the national and European hydrogen strategy, hydrogen in combination with renewable energy sources is assigned a central role for the transformation of the European energy system. This is the case as the properties of hydrogen are able to complement the increasing electrification of the sectors. For example, hydrogen can be stored in large underground caverns, transported in pipelines and used for power generation when renewable energy generation is insufficient, and it provides decarbonization opportunities in applications that cannot or are difficult to decarbonize through direct electrification. As a result, power-to-gas-systems, and especially electrolysers, will play a key role as the interface of electricity and gas infrastructure in the future integrated energy system to couple both energy carriers. In this talk, a brief overview of the future energy system scenarios and their implications on the industrial, mobility, and heating sector will be given. Afterwards, the options of producing hydrogen will be discussed and which requirements they have to fulfil to be integrated effectively and economically in the future energy system. Due to their critical role at the interface of the power and gas grid, special attention is paid to the technical requirements based on the properties and restrictions of the energy grid.