Safer alternative for an explosive reaction

The chemical industry has been using a reaction with explosive chemicals for over 100 years - now scientists have discovered a safer alternative

29-Apr-2024 - Explosions and poisoning. Serious injuries and even deaths. In the history of the chemical industry there have been repeated accidents, sometimes fatal, often caused by dangerous and explosive chemicals that are required for certain reactions. Aryldiazonium salts, which have been used for 140 ...

Electrochemistry Paves the Way: Sustainable Synthesis Method Reveals N-Hydroxy Modifications for Pharmaceuticals

Closing knowledge gaps - new findings on heterocycles

18-Apr-2024 - New highly selective and scalable electro-organic synthesis of novel benzo[e]-1,2,4-thiadiazine-1,1-dioxides which represent an important structural motif of APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients) modified with a unique N-hydroxy moiety. Recently published research results enable preparative ...

A microscopic look at atmospheric chemistry

New discovery contradicts textbook models

19-Jan-2024 - Many important reactions related to climate and environmental processes take place where water molecules interface with air. For example, the evaporation of ocean water plays an important role in atmospheric chemistry and climate science. Understanding these reactions is crucial to efforts to ...

Tobias Erb receives the Leibniz Award 2024

Innovative, interdisciplinary research approach opens up new possibilities for developing technologies to address the global climate crisis

11-Dec-2023 - Prof. Dr. Tobias Erb, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology and Professor at the University of Marburg, has been awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The Leibniz Prize is the most important research award in Germany and ...

Efficient discovery of improved energy materials by a new AI-guided workflow

These can help alleviate the ongoing energy crisis

21-Jul-2023 - Scientists of the NOMAD Laboratory at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society recently proposed a workflow that can dramatically accelerate the search for novel materials with improved properties. They demonstrated the power of the approach by identifying more than 50 strongly ...

New Discovery: Toward sugar origami

Folded carbohydrates could open up completely new perspectives in biomedicine and materials science

06-Jul-2023 - Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) have designed a carbohydrate sequence capable of folding into a stable secondary structure. Until now, such self-folding biopolymers had only been developed for DNA and proteins, and sugars were previously considered too ...

Otto Hahn Medal for chemist Dr Susanne Reischauer

29-Jun-2023 - At its annual meeting in Göttingen, the Max Planck Society awarded the Otto Hahn Medal 2022 to the young scientist Dr Susanne Reischauer. The prize is awarded for outstanding scientific achievements during doctoral studies. Dr. Susanne Reischauer is a chemist who worked at the Max Planck ...

Researchers dive deep into bismuth complexes

Chemists publish startling results in “Science”

23-May-2023 - To be able to exploit the advantages of elements and their molecular compounds in a targeted manner, chemists have to develop a fundamental understanding of their properties. In the case of the element bismuth, a team from the Max Planck Institut für Kohlenforschung has now taken an important ...

Slim steel - strong and safe

A material made from a few readily available components is very strong in tension and is nevertheless highly formable

31-Jan-2023 - Until now, developers of steels have had to make a choice: Either they increase the tensile strength of the material and usually accept that their material becomes relatively brittle. Or they rely on the fact that the steel can be strongly stretched and thus absorb a lot of energy in the event of ...

Why optical cavities curb the rate of chemical reactions

“This works puts the controversial field of polaritonic chemistry onto a different level”

23-Dec-2022 - Chemical processes are all around us. From novel materials to more effective medicines or plastic products – chemical reactions play a key role in the design of the things we use every day. Scientists constantly search for better ways to control these reactions, for example to develop new ...