In the past two weeks, we welcomed ten girls and boys from nearby schools for Girls'Day and Erlebnis Chemie@HU. During these two events, the students synthesized their own hydrogels, worked at the glovebox and learned about the basics of alkali metals. Thanks to Phil, Chiara, Maria and Daniela for organizing.

Recently, HU Berlin joined the Kompotenznetzwerk Lithium-Ionen Batterien e.V., KLiB. Last week, at the 50. KLiB Member Meeting in Frankfurt, Gustav introduced the battery research activities at HU Berlin to the KLiB community. Thanks to KLiB for inviting us and organizing this excellent networking event.

This week, Naiyu attended the Batterieforum Deutschland in Berlin. It was an excellent opportunity to present our work on “High-precision surface tension measurements of sodium-potassium alloys towards next-generation semi-solid alkali-metal batteries“ and discuss our research with experts from industry and academia.

Gustav recently started a position as guest researcher at Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung in Department 3 (Containment Systems for Dangerous Goods; Energy Storage). The doctoral work of Andrea Cornelio is our first shared project in which we explore next-generation NASICON-type solid electrolytes. We are looking forward to further expanding this nice link between our group and Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung.

We are very happy that Robert joined the group as an undergraduate student. He is currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in production engineering at University of Bremen. Welcome, Robert!

With his co-authors Carlos D. Díaz-Marín, Lorenzo Masetti, Miles A. Roper, Kezia E. Hector, Yang Zhong, Zhengmao Lu, Omer R. Caylan and Jeffrey C. Grossman, Gustav published a work on “Physics-based prediction of moisture-capture properties of hydrogels” in Nature Communications.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-53291-5

We are very happy that Andrea joined the group as a doctoral student. He earned a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. degree in Energy Engineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy), with two international exchanges in INSA Lyon (France) and Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden). He will work on a shared project between Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM) and GER on NASICON solid electrolytes and safety for Na-ion batteries.

Maria did a great job in defending her Bachelor's thesis about “Fabrication of thin hydrogel layers and their application as sodium-ion-electrolytes". Congratulations, Maira, for the successful defense, and thank you for your contributions to the lab in the past six months!

Together with Philipp Adelhelm and his team, we organized the 5th Sodium Battery Symposium. We would like to thank all participants, invited speakers, and everyone who helped organize and make SBS5 a success! We are proud to see that the event has grown to more than 300 participants and look forward to the coming years of SBS!