Multimaterial 3D Nanoprinter Enables Breakthrough in Parallel Synthesis

DECHEMA Prize & DFG Heisenberg Grant for Felix Löffler

31-Jul-2024 - Dr. Felix Löffler takes chemical synthesis out of flasks and beakers and replaces liquid solvents with solid polymer inks in a 3D multimaterial nanoprinter of his own invention. A laser beam precisely transfers nanometric amounts of chemical compounds onto an acceptor surface, where thousands of ...

Chemists mimic natural molecular structures: New possibility for vaccine development

Fluorinated sugar molecules as vaccine leads against meningitis B and C

28-May-2024 - Meningococci (Neisseria meningitidis) are disease-causing bacteria that cause life-threatening meningitis, or blood poisoning (septicaemia). There are a number of meningococcal variants worldwide, known as serogroups, and in Germany the Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO) recommends ...

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 ...

Big award for the development of artificial photosynthesis

Research award and one million euros

12-Nov-2021 - As one of three award winners, Markus Antonietti receives the international research prize "Lombardia è Ricerca", endowed with 1,000,000 euros, at La Scala in Milan. The researchers have developed a process for clean energy production using "artificial photosynthesis" modeled on nature. We humans ...

Nanomaterials with laser printing

New and environmentally friendly method for synthesizing materials

02-Jun-2021 - In the journal Nature Communications, an interdisciplinary team from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces presents for the first time a laser-driven technology that enables them to create nanoparticles such as copper, cobalt and nickel oxides. At the usual printing speed, ...

Largest Synthetic Polysaccharide Assembled

Linear 100-mer polysaccharide within 188 hours

05-May-2020 - Chemists at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (Potsdam, Germany) have set a milestone by preparing the two largest carbohydrates ever assembled. Using an Automated Glycan Assembly (AGA) instrument originally developed at the institute they prepared a linear 100-mer and achieved ...

A chemical factory for all cases

Radial synthesis breaks new ground for chemical research and production

23-Mar-2020 - In the future, bottlenecks in the supply of medicines could be more easily eliminated. An automated machine for radial synthesis developed by chemists at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces will enable the flexible production of medical agents and other chemical products. The ...

Nanostructures: customized carbon

A new synthesis method produces novel nanostructures from carbon

17-Apr-2015 - They are tiny and comprise spherical, sheet-like or fibrous particles. And they consist chiefly of the chemical element carbon. The talk here is about unusual carbon nanostructures that scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam-Golm are now producing with a ...

Making nanoparticles in artificial cells

30-Jun-2009 - Two new construction manuals are now available for the world's smallest lamps. Based on these protocols, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces have tailor-made nanoparticles that can be used as position lights on cell proteins and, possibly in the future as well, as ...

Progress toward Artificial Photosynthesis?

Direct activation with graphitic carbon nitride makes carbon dioxide accessible for chemical synthesis

13-Mar-2007 - Plants can do it: they simply grab carbon dioxide out of the air and covert it into biomass. In this process, known as photosynthesis, the plants use light as their energy source. Chemists would also like to be able to use CO2 as a carbon source for their synthetic reactions, but it doesn't work ...