News of November 7, 2024

Synergy Grant from the European Research Council for Thomas Heine

German-Dutch research consortium to receive ten million euros

CASUS Visiting Faculty member Prof. Thomas Heine is part of the “2DPolyMembrane” project, which aims to use the money raised to develop new ultra-thin membranes. These membranes are intended to make separation processes in our daily lives better and more efficient, from drug development and purification, the purification of wastewater to the separation of material transport in fuel cells. Heine has been Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at Dresden University of Technology and a scientist at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) since 2018. In 2023, he joined the Visiting Faculty of the Center for Advanced Systems Understanding CASUS in Görlitz, HZDR’s institute for data-intensive systems science.

In addition to Heine, Xinliang Feng from the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle (Saale), Germany, and Grégory Schneider from Leiden University, the Netherlands, are also part of the “2DPolyMembrane” project team receiving this prestigious Synergy Grant . With this type of grants, the European Research Council (ERC) supports teams of two to four experts at different locations. These grants support projects that lead to “progress at the frontiers of knowledge” through interdisciplinary collaboration. They are associated with funding of up to ten million euros over a period of six years. The ERC received 548 applications for the current call. 57 projects were selected for funding and will receive in total 571 million euros.

The project combines chemical material synthesis, theory and nanoscience. The researchers want to lay the foundation for the next generation of membrane technologies and jointly develop a real “game changer” in separation technology. The aim is to develop new membrane concepts that enable unprecedented performance for energy devices such as fuel cells, osmotic power generators and batteries.

“We have succeeded in developing ultra-thin membranes, only 10 to 50 nanometers thick, which are significantly superior to conventional technology in terms of selectivity and efficiency. In addition to increased energy efficiency, they also allow the separation of similar particles, such as hydrogen isotopes,” explains Heine. “To do this, we use our newly developed 2D polymer heterostructures, which contain atomically precise funnel-shaped pores with electrostatic gradients.” 2D polymer heterostructures promise revolutionary properties that make them ideal for selective and unidirectional ion transport: they are extremely thin, have a precise pore size and high functionality. They are therefore at the center of the project’s efforts and are expected to demonstrate over the course of the project that they not only excel in the laboratory – but also deliver robust results on larger scales.

Together with other HZDR teams, Heine is researching the chemistry of synthetic two-dimensional materials, for example, as part of the German Research Foundation’s Collaborative Research Center 1415, which launched in 2020 and was extended in 2024.

Further information:

Dr. Martin Laqua | Officer Communications, Press and Public Relations
Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS) at HZDR
Cell phone: +49 1512 807 6932 | Email: m.laqua@hzdr.de