Neutron Summer School for the study of hydrogen storage materials
Participants and mentors of this year’s Neutron Summer School.
An international group of students and scientists recently completed Margarita Russina’s second ever Neutron Summer School program. Just like last year, the Summer School took place in mid-September on the HZB’s Wannsee campus, offering participants a week filled with a broad spectrum of classes and activities, all on the topic of neutron scattering methods in the study of hydrogen storage materials.
A balanced mixture of lectures on hydrogen storage technology basics, practical laboratory lessons, and working with the HZB’s scientific measuring equipment afforded participants an in-depth glimpse into this area of applied research. A lecture on metal hydrides by guest scientist Arndt Remhof (Empa) from Switzerland was one of the program highlights while HZB’s own Daniel Többens, Dirk Wallacher, and Moritz Schlegel made sure participants received all the mentoring they needed.
Lectures and practical workshops are as much a part of the Summer School experience as is its international flair. The twelve students enrolled in this year’s program hailed from Greece, China, Estland, Russia, Germany, and many other countries. The Neutron Summer School has a very strong reputation among the international scientific community. Most students learned about the program by word-of-mouth from their supervisors – our international colleagues at various universities and research institutes.
Many of the participants were greatly impressed by the HZB’s state-of-the-art scientific equipment: "I was surprised about the very good scientific infrastructure at HZB. It is possible to apply very good theoretical knowledge here by using high technology”, says Alexander Skarvelas from Greece. On top of a solid infrastructure, it is also the intensive mentoring, which makes the Neutron Summer School program so attractive to students, adds Dr. Lilai Li from China: „They always tried to answer my questions. The support was pretty good, I learned a lot in this week”.
- Porous Radical Organic framework improves lithium-sulphur batteriesA 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 organic frameworks or COFs). Catalytically accelerated reactions take place in these pores, firmly trapping polysulphides, which would shorten the battery life. Some of the experimental analyses were conducted at the BAMline at BESSY II.
- Shedding light on insulators: how light pulses unfreeze electronsMetal oxides are abundant in nature and central to technologies such as photocatalysis and photovoltaics. Yet, many suffer from poor electrical conduction, caused by strong repulsion between electrons in neighboring metal atoms. Researchers at HZB and partner institutions have shown that light pulses can temporarily weaken these repulsive forces, lowering the energy required for electrons mobility, inducing a metal-like behavior. This discovery offers a new way to manipulate material properties with light, with high potential to more efficient light-based devices.
- Lithium-sulphur batteries with lean electrolyte: problem areas clarifiedUsing a non-destructive method, a team at HZB investigated practical lithium-sulphur pouch cells with lean electrolyte for the first time. With operando neutron tomography, they could visualise in real-time how the liquid electrolyte distributes and wets the electrodes across multilayers during charging and discharging. These findings offer valuable insights into the cell failure mechanisms and are helpful to design compact Li-S batteries with a high energy density in formats relevant to industrial applications.