Highlights – Institute for Materials and X-Ray Physics

11.5.2011

Evidence of sticky boundary layers and anisotropic diffusion in nanochannels published as Scientific Highlight in the annual report of the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Neutron Research Reactor (Munich).

19.10.2011 Dr.-Eduard-Martin Award

Simon Gruener received the Dr.-Eduard-Martin award for his Ph.D. thesis from the friends of Saarland University.

6.2.2012 Capillary Condensation and Crystallization of Nitrogen in an Ordered Mesoporous Silica (SBA-15)

Sorption and calorimetric study on capillary condensation, freezing and melting of nitrogen in mesoporous silica published in Physical Review B (pdf).

27.2. - 9.3.2012 SoftMatControl, Poznan (Poland)

The international school “SoftMatControl” is a European ERASMUS Intensive Programme proposed by the universities of Rennes 1, Poznan and Saarbrücken. It offers a unique opportunity to European master and young PhD students in physics to gain exclusive skills in the understanding of out-of-equilibrium phenomena, by mastering control parameters of complexity in soft and molecular materials.

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4.2. - 14.2.2013 SoftMatControl, Rennes (France)

The international school “SoftMatControl” is a European ERASMUS Intensive Programme proposed by the universities of Rennes 1, Poznan and Saarbrücken. It offers a unique opportunity to European master and young PhD students in physics to gain exclusive skills in the understanding of out-of-equilibrium phenomena, by mastering control parameters of complexity in soft and molecular materials.

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News

05.06.2026 Water, Clay and Carbon: A New Route to Sustainable Energy Storage

🌎 Water, Clay and Carbon: A New Route to Sustainable Energy Storage - we demonstrate an all-water supercapacitor stable over 60,000 charging cycles.

💧⚡Can pure water store electrical energy? A research team within the Cluster of Excellence BlueMat – Water-Driven Materials has now shown that it can.

🔋 By confining water within nanometer-sized channels in clay minerals, the team developed a supercapacitor capable of efficiently storing and transporting electrical charge with remarkable stability.

💡 Read more in our latest press release ➡️ https://lnkd.in/dttmcBcQ

Publication:
Artemov, V. et al., All-water supercapacitor enabled by 1-nm clay channels, Nat Commun 17, 5014 (2026).

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-73924-1
23.04.2026 Lehmann Prize awarded to Patrick Huber

🏆 Congratulations to Patrick Huber on receiving the Volker Lehmann Prize for the most outstanding talk at the 2026 Porous Semiconductors Science and Technology Conference (PSST2026) in Naples, Italy.

💧 His presentation, “Nature’s Blueprint: Water-Enabled Functions in Hierarchically Porous Silicon,” showcased key research directions of the Cluster of Excellence BlueMat: Water-Driven Materials.

🏆 The Lehmann Prize honors Volker Lehmann, who—together with Leigh Canham and Ulrich Gösele - co-discovered the quantum confinement effect in silicon.
22.10.2025 Water as an energy carrier: nanoporous silicon generates electricity from friction with water

Exciting news! Our new publication in Nano Energy presents a novel way for converting mechanical energy into electricity – by harnessing water confined in nanometre-sized pores of silicon as the active working fluid (press release).
29.09.2025 Colossal Effect of Nanopore Surface Ionic Charge on the Dynamics of Confined Water

In a recent publication, we report a particularly rewarding result from a French-German collaboration linking Hamburg, Rennes, Grenoble and Paris, with key neutron scattering experiments carried out at the high-flux neutron reactor of the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France.

We show that water behaves very differently when confined to tiny nanopores—and that surface charge makes all the difference. Adding ionic charges to pore walls dramatically slows down water motion, not just in the vicinity of the pore wall but throughout the entire pore. This long-range control goes far beyond simple wetting effects and highlights surface charge as a powerful tool for using water as a nanoscale working fluid in water-driven materials, membranes, and nanotechnologies.
09.09.2025 When symmetry breaks in tiny spaces

Nanopores unlock hidden chirality in exotic liquid crystals – with the observation now made by us within an international cooperation with Ukraine, France and Poland, they might find even wider usage in energy storage or conversion or tunable lenses (see press release).