Graeber Lab for Energy Research

We are very happy that Fariza joined the group as a postdoctoral researcher. She earned a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. degree in Physics in Kazakhstan before completing her PhD in Materials Science in KTU,  Lithuania. Fariza's expertise includes materials synthesis, thin-film deposition, and advanced electrochemical and structural characterization. Welcome, Fariza!

Last week, Maria participated in the final of the Forum Junge Spitzenforschung competition, where she presented the atmospheric water harvesting research that she and Gustav are conducting. Our team earned fourth place, congratulations to both of you! Many thanks to Humboldt Innovations for hosting the event and for connecting us with industry partners.

This week, Gustav attended the 12th Lithium-Sulfur Workshop in Dresden. At the workshop, he had the opportunity to present our recent work on potassium-sulfur batteries by Chiara and to learn many new things both from academia and industry about sulfur-based batteries. Thanks to Fraunhofer IWS for organizing this nice event!

Robert did a great job in defending his Bachelor's thesis about “Sustainable alkali-metal batteries based on abundantly available sulfur, sodium and potassium". Congratulations, Robert, for the successful defense, and thank you for your contributions to the lab in the past months!

Today, our work on "Wetting Interactions Between Porous Carbon Hosts and Liquid Sodium-Potassium Alloys Toward Their Use in Negative Electrodes of Alkali-Metal Batteries" has been published in Advanced Functional Materials (Wiley).

Link: https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202523169

Congratulations to Johannes!

We are very happy that Olha joined the group as a research intern. She is currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in Computational Engineering Science at Technische Universität Berlin. Welcome, Olha!

This week, Chiara attended the International Society of Electrochemistry conference in Mainz. She had the opportunity to present her poster, “A potassium-sulfur battery with solid electrolyte, metallic anode, and liquid catholyte: spectroscopic insights into polysulfide evolution” and to discuss our research with researchers worldwide.

Last week, Andrea , Johannes and Gustav attended the Sodium Battery Symposium 6 (SBS 6) in Dresden. Andrea showed a poster about his recent progress in NASICON synthesis. Johannes showed a poster about his work on alkali-metal wetting phenomena in porous carbon hosts. Gustav gave a talk highlighting two recent projects from our group, also introducing the work from Naiyu Qi on "High-Precision Surface Tension Measurements of Sodium, Potassium, and Their Alloys via Du Noüy Ring Tensiometry" recently published in American Chemical Society Applied Materials & Interfaces. It was very motivating to see the progress made in the sodium battery community and connecting with the important researchers and companies in the field.

We are very happy that Wen joined the group as a research intern. She is currently pursuing a masters's degree in Polymer Science jointly offered by Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and Universität Potsdam. Welcome, Wen!

We are very happy that several new students have joined our group. We welcome Benjamin and Lincoln as summer interns, Jessica as a student assistant, Hauke as an undergraduate student, and Alexander as a graduate student.