Highlights - Institute for Materials and X-Ray Physics

5.8.2018 Oil Imbibition in Nanopores
Study on silicone oil imbibition has been published online in "Transport in Porous Media": Capillarity-Driven Oil Flow in Nanopores: Darcy Scale Analysis of Lucas-Washburn Imbibition Dynamics.

25.6.2018 TUHH@DESY
Students and staff of Hamburg University of Technology visited Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY) and enjoyed a tour across the campus and the PETRA III beamlines guided by Milena Lippmann and Oliver Seeck. A few impressions can be found here.

5.2.2018 Quantized self-assembly of liquid-crystalline nano rings, pubished in Physical Review Letters. See the press release of TUHH (English, German) and DESY (English, German).

May 14-17, 2018 Minisymposium: Fluids in Nanoporous Media

organized by Gennady Gor and Patrick Huber at the 10th International Conference on Porous Media (InterPore meeting), May 14-17 2018 in New Orleans, USA.

Read more: Minisymposium on InterPore 2018 in New Orleans

27.11.2017 Article A ferroelectric liquid crystal confined in cylindrical nanopores: Reversible smectic layer buckling, enhanced light rotation and extremely fast electro-optically active Goldstone excitations has been published online in Nanoscale.

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News

06.10.2026 Multimodal synchrotron X-ray analysis of palm-leaf manuscripts

Combining synchrotron X-ray scattering and fluorescence with machine learning, we identified structural and compositional signatures in historical palm-leaf manuscripts that discriminate between botanical genera and reflect their processing. The non-destructive approach provides a material science basis for provenance studies, complementing codicological and historical evidence. See our publication in npj Heritage Science and the press release.
17.09.2026 A Tale of Two Waters: H₂O and D₂O Electrify Surfaces Differently

Hydrophobic nanoporous silicon acts as a single platform for comparing three solid–liquid triboelectrification regimes: immersion–emersion, droplet contact, and pressure-driven pore intrusion, with H₂O and D₂O highlighting isotope-dependent electrical responses. Rather than providing one simple mechanism, the study published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C opens new questions about the molecular origins of water–solid electrification—and shows how isotope substitution can help uncover them.

J. Phys. Chem. C (2026) 130 (36): 12748–12756.

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.6c04134
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).