News

Small angle neutron scattering at KWS-1 has enabled scientists of Forschungszentrum Jülich and the University College London to look at the arrangement of proteins inside nanocavities. They showed for the first time, that the molecules do not clump despite limited space and even found the reasons for this behaviour.

For the first time, scientists of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) have trapped positrons in a magnetic cage without losses. This is an important step towards a matter-antimatter plasma of electrons and their antiparticles, the positrons, which are assumed to occur in the vicinity of neutron stars and black holes.

In an article published online now in Science Advances, a team of scientists from the USA and Germany offer an explanation of how a particular phase-change memory (PCM) material can work a thousand times faster than current flash computer memory, while being significantly more durable with respect to the number of daily read-writes. They have studied the material at the MLZ instrument TOFTOF.

At the end of November the German Chapter of “Women in Nuclear“ (WiN) held its Annual General Meeting at the FRM II. WiN is a worldwide association of women working in the field of nuclear techniques and industries as scientists or engineers, or in other functions.

They praise the versatility, the opportunity to try something and the friendly colleagues: The research neutron source has sent four apprentices into professional life this year. The three young men and one woman have learned specialized computer science and mechatronics in Garching.

Praise and applause characterized the farewell event honouring Professor Dr. Winfried Petry, the former Scientific Director of FRM II, which was held on 25 October 2018 organized by Professor Dr. Peter Müller-Buschbaum. Winfried Petry’s merits were highly appreciated by the President of TUM, the Bavarian Minister of Science and the Arts, a representative of the Federal Ministry for Education and Research and by a board member of the Forschungszentrum Jülich.

Organic solar cells are cheaper to produce than conventional photovoltaic systems and can even be sprayed as thin layers on any surfaces. They have been the subject of intensive research since the Nobel price was awarded for conducting polymers in 2000. Physicists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now been able to clarify why additives increase the efficiency of solar cells from a morphological point of view with the use of neutrons at the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum (MLZ).

Two pupils changed Catalonia for Bavaria for four weeks and performed a practical with Dr. Sebastian Busch at the MLZ in summer.

Themed additive manufacturing the VDI-TUM Expert Forum took place at the faculty of mechanical engineering (TUM) on 13 September 2018. The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum of the Technical University of Munich represented by Dr. Ralph Gilles and the Association of German Engineers (VDI) Materials Engineering, represented by Dr. Achim Eggert and the VDI Committee of Experts 101 organized the 7th VDI-TUM Expert Forum.

Prof. i.R. Dr. Winfried Petry has been awarded with the honorary title of Emeritus of Excellence of the Technical University of Munich (TUM). TUM-President Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Wolfgang A. Herrmann bestowed the certificate appreciating his academic achievements on 9 October.

One sixth of the annual visitors don’t come on one day for no reason. Like every year the neutron research source had quite a lot to offer.

More than 100 happy children and the same number of parents step out of the research neutron source Heinz Maier-Leibnitz (FRM II) on October 3rd. The children benefited from a special guided tour during the door-opener-day of “Sendung mit der Maus” (The Show with the Mouse) where they built chemical elements and finally enjoyed a sweet and ice-cold surprise.

A wealth of new contacts, ideas and information was taken home by more than 520 scientists who attended the “German Conference for Research with Synchrotron Radiation, Neutrons and Ion Beams at Large Facilities 2018” in mid September 2018.

Representatives of eight European research infrastructures signed the Charter of the League of advanced European Neutron Sources (LENS) today at the International Conference of Research Infrastructures, ICRI2018.

The new instrument KOMPASS was born on May 29, 2018, at exactly 15:16h. At that time, it detected the first neutrons, which were scattered from a sample.

What do marshmallows, spaghetti and Lego have in common? They explain exciting methods and principles of neutron sciences. More than 4600 visitors could convince themselves about that at the Scientific Village in Toulouse in July 2018.

3 October 2018 is dedicated to children and families: “Die Sendung mit der Maus”, (The Show with the Mouse), a well reputed children’s series on German television, called for the nationwide 7th “Door-opener-day”. At the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum, too, doors that usually are closed for children will open.

Like in the previous years, the Physics Department of the TUM, the Gerda-Stetter Foundation, and the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum (MLZ) collaborated again to offer this three-day program called, “Physics and technology made easy” especially for girls from the age of 11 to 13 years.

Neutron scattering has enabled scientists at Forschungszentrum Jülich to detect the formation of droplets in supercritical carbon dioxide at high pressure. This finding can be used to determine a phase transition within the fluid with greater accuracy.

The positron source NEPOMUC can be seen on a billboard in downtown Munich until the end of July. The more, a wooden model of the atomic egg is exhibited in a gallery in Augustenstraße, Munich. Both are projects from architecture students at the Technical University of Munich.

For the first time a team of researchers have discovered with the help of neutrons at the instrument SANS-1 two different phases of magnetic skyrmions in a single material. Physicists of the Technical Universities of Munich and Dresden and the University of Cologne can now better study and understand the properties of these magnetic structures, which are important for both basic research and applications.

Indian researchers have engineered a piezoelectric ceramic with the highest shape changing value reported so far for polycrystalline ceramics and close to the record set by single crystals. Using neutron scattering at the instrument SPODI, they could explain the mechanism of the new material.

The international MLZ Conference 2018 “Neutrons for Culture and Art” was held at beautiful Lenggries, Germany, not far away from Munich in southern Bavaria between June 19th and 22nd, 2018. More than 40 scientists and staff members of several museums had accepted the invitation and came together for this meeting at the Arabella Brauneck Hotel.

Molecular nanomagnets represent quite promising systems for high-density storage devices and as building units in quantum computers. Key requirements for their large-scale industrial application are the storage efficiency and the storage reliability against internal and external perturbations.Indeed, the main source of memory loss results from electronic quantum fluctuations within the ground state of the molecule (so-called quantum tunneling). A Danish-based team of international researchers has now gauged the effect of a chemistry-induced symmetry change in lanthanides-based molecular nanomagnets, thus addressing both key requirements at once. The results, achieved via inelastic neutron scattering at the MLZ time-of-flight spectrometer TOFTOF and complementary techniques, recently appeared in Nature Communications and Advanced Functional Materials.

Since the end of February, Prof. Dr. Stephan Förster, Forschungszentrum Jülich, has been appointed as director at the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum. He succeeds Prof. Dr. Thomas Brückel.

The participants in this year’s Edgar Lüscher Seminar at the Gymnasium Zwiesel, Bavarian Forest, got an update of pioneering research work. The scientific heads of the seminar, Prof. Dr. Winfried Petry and Prof. Dr. Peter Müller-Buschbaum from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), had invited renowned speakers to give talks to the teachers in the school in Zwiesel.

Quantum spin liquids represent a novel state of matter in which the spins do not arrange themselves in an ordered pattern as they do in a conventional magnet. This state features spins with long-range entanglements and fractional excitations, and thus can find applications in quantum computation and communication.

The Norwegian Research Council granted 2 million Kroner for a Post-Doc position to design a sample holder for Li-ion coin cell batteries, which can be charged and discharged while measuring with neutrons.

For the German Conference for Research with Synchroton Radiation, Neutrons and Ion Beams at Large Facilities (SNI 2018) at MLZ, abstracts can be submitted until 11 May. The conference will take place in Garching from 17 until 19 September 2018.

An international team of researchers has discovered functional electronic interfaces in quantum materials that can spontaneously self-assemble.

The world’s highest-performance neutron source for research, FRM II of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), will have a new Scientific Director as of April 1st. With the appointment of Professor Peter Müller-Buschbaum, an internationally renowned researcher has been appointed to succeed Winfried Petry.

Lithium-ion batteries are an indispensable part of our daily lives. The negative electrodes are typically based on graphite. However, they have some problems, such as the so-called lithium plating. Now there is an electrode material that is not based on graphite and does not show these disadvantages: sodium hexatitanate.

Developers from Bosch and scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) are using neutrons to analyze the filling of lithium ion batteries for hybrid cars with electrolytes. Their experiments show that electrodes are wetted twice as fast in a vacuum as under normal pressure.

It is already known that dinosaurs lay eggs. The fact that the offspring of the same mother hatch at different times from the eggs, was observed so far only in modern birds. For the first time, measurements at FRM II could prove that already their ancestors, the dinosaurs, hatched asynchronously.

Researchers from MLZ (Forschungszentrum Jülich) have investigated the crystallization of the protein lysozyme in an experiment at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL). They focused on conditions known to result in the formation of particularly large crystals, suitable for use in high-resolution neutron protein crystallography.

Christoph Göbel, district administrator of the district of Munich (4th from left), and some executives visited the FRM II and faced up to a group photo in the reactor hall.

Magnetic skyrmions can potentially store information in a higher density than today’s data carriers. Since their discovery using neutrons at the FRM II in 2009, research on magnetic skyrmions is booming. For the first time, physicists of the Technical University of Munich have used a specially adapted imaging technique at the MLZ in order to clarify exactly how and where the magnetic vortex structure of the skyrmion lattice forms in extended bulk samples.

Dr. Harald Breitkreutz hält unter diesem Titel am 14. Februar um 19 Uhr im Rahmen der Reihe “Wissenschaft für Jedermann” einen Vortrag im Deutschen Museum.

Dr. Harald Breitkreutz will give a lecture under this title at Deutsches Museum on February 14th at 7 pm as part of the series “Science for Everyone”.

Armin Kriele from the Helmholtz Center Geesthacht has something in common with the famous inventor of Walt Disney: Both make inventions for the joy of working. Kriele is responsible for the Materials Science Laboratory at the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Center and has a lot to do with batteries of all kinds. For their detailed analysis, he has now made an invention and applied for a patent.

During the several-hour tour, Josef Hauner was enthusiastic about the many applications of Garching’s neutrons in medicine, industry and research: “It was very instructive and exciting,” he said. The visit was conducted by the Manfred Danner, who is fire district counselor of the Freising district and full-time deputy shift supervisor and reactor driver at FRM II.

Ismail Zöybek, who works at FRM II in the light water systems group, has received a personal thank-you letter from the Minister of State, Ludwig Spaenle. How did he come to the honor of such a letter from the Bavarian State Ministry for Education and Culture, Science and Art?

Several new projects in the research neutron source Heinz Maier-Leibnitz will influence the research and the application of neutrons. Three out of these projects are topics in the programme “Münchner Stadtrundgang” of the local tv broadcast muenchen.tv.

The usual methods to define the structure of proteins do not work with membrane proteins. Scientists from the Jülich Centre of Neutron Science have now found a new neutron method to determine the structure of membrane proteins with a resolution of 1-2 nm.