It also took place online: Veit Gemmer at the Inventor Lab

For the 30th time, the Center for Chemistry (ZFC) invited 16 high school students from Hesse to learn about scientific practice and specific corporate structures through dialogue with professionals. In the “digital lab,” the young talents explored high-performance materials that also play a central role in the context of the energy transition. Topics included efficient storage media for renewable energy, as well as surface analyses and high-performance magnets, such as those used in the field of electric mobility and in wind turbines.

Veit Gemmer, a student in Class 13 at Steinmühle, had qualified for the week-long Inventors’ Lab. His group focused on sodium solid-state batteries, which contain so-called Nasicon electrolytes and may one day offer alternatives to the problematic materials currently used in lithium-ion batteries.

The Inventors’ Lab was actually supposed to take place in October 2020 but was then postponed to early 2021 due to the pandemic. This event, too, could only be held online, but it still provided interesting insights, as Veit reports:

The Inventors’ Lab, themed “High-Performance Materials for the Future,” which normally takes place at the Technical University (TU) of Darmstadt, was at least able tobe heldonline via the Microsoft Teams platform. During the week-long workshop, we had the opportunity to gain exciting insights into the field of materials science and the Merck Group through various discussions with experts from TU Darmstadt and Merck KGaA. Using this knowledge, combined with our own additional research, our group was tasked with creating an educational video about sodium solid-state batteries. Even though creating a high-quality video took a great deal of time, the week was still very interesting.

Veit Gemmer

Created in the Inventor’s Lab created Video about sodium solid-state batteries

 

Closing Ceremony (below: Veit with his group)

 

Computer simulations of the Transport mechanisms and Conductivityen of sodium–ions in the solid-state electrolyte Nasicon (Na+–Super-ion conductor).

 

Improvement of Conductivityby Nasicoelectrolytes via Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD)