How to store solar energy is the central challenge facing the energy reform. Alongside traditional solutions – such as solar cells or batteries – creative chemical concepts for storing energy are paving the way for entirely new opportunities. Intramolecular reactions are making it possible for solar...
The future of chemistry is ‘electrifying’. With the increasing availability of electrical energy from renewable sources, it will be possible in the future to drive many chemical processes using an electric current. This will facilitate the use of sustainable methods to manufacture products or fuels,...
Researchers from Freie Universität Berlin, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and Universität Ulm have made a significant contribution to the wet chemical synthesis of graphene from graphite, defining the mechanism on which it is based. They succeeded in solving the basic proble...
Visitors to the Oktoberfest have always known it and now it has been scientifically proven – beer can lift your spirits. Scientists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) examined 13,000 food components to find out whether they stimulate the reward centre in the brain and make pe...
Catalysts are agents that initiate chemical reactions, speed them up or significantly increase the yield of the desired product. New and improved catalysts are thus considered the key to creating more sustainable and efficient production processes in the chemical industry. In a joint research projec...
In view of climate change and the needs of the energy reform, it has become particularly important to significantly increase the efficiency of organic solar cells. In a process known as ‘singlet fission’, one photon simultaneously excites two electrons. If this effect can be exploited, it may well b...
Many of the problems associated with climate change could be solved if we could make it possible for vehicles to run on fuel made from water and carbon dioxide. Prof. Dr Karsten Meyer of the Chair of Inorganic and General Chemistry at FAU has won the 2017 Ludwig Mond Award of the British Royal Socie...
Yoghurt, beer, bread and specialities such as tasty blue cheeses or good wine – special microorganisms and refining processes first produce the pleasant flavours and enticing aromas of many foodstuffs. FAU researchers have now investigated the formation of rot in grapes and have shown that when this...
Individual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle joined together as if moved by magic – that is what FAU materials researchers imagine when they apply molecules to surfaces to produce materials for new technologies such as organic solar cells. To date, researchers knew very little about how large molecules atta...
