Highlights - Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf

At the end of an exciting and challenging year we wish all collaboration partners and research friends relaxing holidays and a good start into a happy, successful and above all healthy new year 2022.

From December 23, 2021 to January 2, 2022, HZDR is closed for the holidays.

Since December 2021, Dr. Ellen Adams leads the DRESDEN-concept Research Group for Physical Chemistry of Biomolecular Condensates. Her position with tenure track to a professorship is jointly funded by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the Cluster of Excellence Physics of Life (PoL) at TU Dresden. Ellen Adams aims to use the latest terahertz technologies to decipher biophysical processes of interfaces - so-called membrane-less condensates - in the cell interior, which for example play a role in neurodegenerative diseases.

Prof. Michael Bachmann and his team from the Institute of Radiopharmaceutical Cancer Research at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) will receive a total of 350,000 euros over the next three years for their research project “Viroprotect: Inhalation Drug Against Infection”. It is one of four projects funded through the Else Kröner-Fresenius Foundation’s competition “Ideas to fight droplets”, as the foundation announced at a press conference today (November 11th, 2021).

Ab sofort können Schülerinnen und Schüler der Klassen 3 bis 12 wieder am JUNIORDOKTOR-Programm teilnehmen und bei rund 100 Veranstaltungen in Dresden ihre Talente testen. Besonders nachgefragt ist auch diesmal das Schülerlabor am Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR). Auftakt der neuen JUNIORDOKTOR-Staffel ist der Start des Herbstferienprogramms „Löten – Platinen bestücken – Radios bauen“ am 19. Oktober 2021 im HZDR. Hier lernen Schülerinnen und Schüler die Grundlagen der Mikroelektronik.

At the heart of planets, extreme states are to be found: temperatures of thousands of degrees, pressures a million times greater than atmospheric pressure. They can therefore only be explored directly to a limited extent – which is why the expert community is trying to use sophisticated experiments to recreate equivalent extreme conditions. An international research team including the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has adapted an established measurement method to these extreme conditions and tested it successfully: Using the light flashes of the world’s strongest X-ray laser the team managed to take a closer look at the important element, carbon, along with its chemical properties. As reported in the journal Physics of Plasmas (DOI: 10.1063/5.0048150), the method now has the potential to deliver new insights into the interior of planets both within and outside of our solar system.

Climate protection means increasingly turning to renewable energies. But in order to store the energy produced by solar, wind and other regenerative processes, sophisticated systems are required. Today’s storage options are still too expensive and hardly or even impossible to recycle. Scientists at HZDR’s Institute of Fluid Dynamics have been working on liquid metal batteries for several years and are now in the European vanguard. Together with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), HZDR’s scientist Dr. Norbert Weber has managed to decisively optimize a novel lithium lead battery. As reported in the Journal of Energy Chemistry (DOI: 10.1016/j.jechem.2021.08.015), thanks to an improved electrolyte formulation, the team was able to increase the power efficiency to nearly 100 percent and the energy density by 45 percent at the same time.

Physicist Michael Gensch from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf was a member of the German-Polish research team which developed a new measurement method that permits the precise measurement of ultrafast X-ray pulses from free electron lasers. The results are published in the scientific journal "Nature Communications"

Bild des Monats - Schachfiguren im Nanometer-Maßstab (1 Nanometer = 1 Millionstel Millimeter) dank fein gebündeltem Ionenstrahl. Die rekordverdächtig kleinen Schachfiguren sind weniger als 50 Nanometer hoch und jeweils nur 20 Mikrometer breit und tief (1 Mikrometer = 1 Tausendstel Millimeter).

Scientists from the research center FZR use the survival mechanism of special bacteria to produce solid nanoclusters out of palladium. The tiny bullets, only a few billions of millimeters in size, show new properties, i.e. enhanced catalytic activity. Thus, bacteria-based nanoclusters seem to be ideally suited for building new nano-catalysts.