KIT

Karlsruhe, October 30, 2024 – A team of technology experts at the KNMFi user facility has published a practice paper (DOI: 10.5334/dsj-2024-050) detailing their approach to implementing the web-based application Kadi4Mat (KadiWeb) as an electronic laboratory notebook (ELN). The ELN is combined with an integrated MaTeLiS instrument database to support the principles of Findable - Accessible - Interoperable - Reusable (FAIR) research data.

Facing challenges in transmission electron microscopy (TEM), focused ion beam (FIB), atom probe tomography (APT), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the team developed a strategy to document the complex processes in the KNMFi user facility. The experimental steps in TEM, APT, and FIB/SEM, as well as traditional sample preparation steps in a metallographic lab, were analyzed and translated into key-value pairs to create the respective templates. This is easily achievable without programming knowledge.

The MaTeLiS instrument database in Kadi4Mat enables users to find instruments at KIT and link them to experiments. In a practical example, the team demonstrated how the developed Kadi4Mat templates can be used to document experimental procedures in the TEM, APT, and FIB environments and how the MaTeLiS instrument database is integrated into Kadi4Mat. Experimental data can easily be added to the records, enabling FAIR data publication. The strategy can be extended to other KNMFi technologies.

Amadeus Bramsiepe, KIT

May 5, 2024

Using the new NAPXAS instrument at the Karlsruhe Research Accelerator (KARA), researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University of Münster aim to observe at the molecular level exactly how batteries charge and discharge. By making liquids accessible for synchrotron research with soft X-rays, NAPXAS provides unique insights into the processes at work in batteries.

NAPXAS (Near Ambient Pressure X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy) has been implemented at IQMT’s soft X-ray analytics facility WERA at the Karlsruhe Research Accelerator’s (KARA’s) KIT Light Source. “With NAPXAS, we can perform spectroscopic investigations of energy conversion and aging processes in batteries under more or less standard wet chemistry conditions, and we can do that live while the batteries are in use,” says Nagel, who is heading KIT’s work on the project.

After a test phase, plans call for researchers worldwide to have access to NAPXAS and WERA through the Karlsruhe Nano Micro Facility, a high-tech platform for research on functional materials in the micro- and nanometer range.

KIT

A Nature Materials review by a collaboration of INT scientists on the recent research on high-entropy materials highlights their emerging potential in energy and electronic applications, based mainly on the intrinsic features of the "cocktail effect" and lattice distortions of these materials. The emphasis lies on ionic and covalent ceramic materials. DOI: 10.1038/s41578-024-00654-5

Dennis Rieger, KIT

Quantum computers are considered to be the computers of the future. Quantum bits (qubits), the smallest computational unit of quantum computers, are the be-all and end-all. Because they have not only two states, but also states in between, qubits process more information in less time. However, maintaining such a state for a longer time is difficult and depends in particular on material properties. A KIT research team now generated qubits that are 100 times more sensitive to material defects – a crucial step toward eliminating them. Electron Beam Lithography (EBL), a KNMFi technology, was the key technology to fabricate 20 nm small nanojunctions. The team published the results in the journal Nature Materials (DOI: 10.1038/s41563-022-01417-9).

Nicole Jung, KIT

ChemASAP is currently being built within KNMFi and will be completed by 2024. The platform is a collaborative effort of different institutes at KIT with the main responsibility at the Institute of Biological and Chemical Systems – Functional Molecular Systems (IBCS-FMS). The platform will allow the development of new materials for different purposes with modern equipment, automated workflows, higher quality and throughput and will bring chemistry development methods to the next technological level. A major aim of the platform is the synthesis of compounds with high purity as well as very good reproducibility and repeatability, gained by standardization and the use of advanced equipment for distinct parts of the process.

The platform will be accessible for non-chemists in order to synthesize chemical compounds needed for different applications in biology and materials sciences. The platform is built in a flexible manner that allows the adaptation of the chemical protocols without the need to change the platform itself.

Nicole Jung, KIT

In a chemical study, derivatives of the novel compound class of triazoloimidazoquinoxalines (TIQ) and rhenium(I) triazoloquinoxaline complexes as well as a new TIQ rhenium complex were synthesized and fully characterized by different techniques in order to gain novel compounds for applications in materials sciences. The whole synthesis and characterization were documented with the ELN Chemotion, allowing the transfer of the process data as well as analysis data to an open access repository in the end. Due to a fully digitalized workflow, data that are usually only described in the supporting information can be directly accessed and downloaded in the repository, allowing to compare, check and reuse the assigned and annotated data in the long run.

Michael Hirtz, KIT

Invasice biopsies for cancer diagnostics and in order to obtain primary material from a tumor are often painful or even dangerous for the patient. Here, liquid biopsies, working on regular blood drawings can be a gentle alternative while still offering direct access to genetic material from a tumor even if the location is unknown. Here we present a novel, lipid microarray based capture strategy for a rapid and highly-specific detection and trapping of cancer-related extracellular vesicles, eliminating the need for time- and material-intensive preparation steps in present approaches. Scanning Probe Lithography (DPN), a KNMFi technology, is used to produce the lipid microarrays.

Michael Hirtz, KIT

Metals that are liquid at or near room temperature offer unique opportunities in printed electronics, in particular high conductivity, flexibility and self-healing. However, they are also challenging to print and their interaction with classical materials is still rarely studied. In our KNMFi labs (Scanning Probe Lithography, DPN), we addressed these challenges by developing new capillary based printing processes (Adv. Mater. Technol. 6 11 (2021) 2100650) and leverage the wide range of available technologies for a correlated study of liquid metal / gold interactions.

KIT

New materials are the focus for future research challenges, e.g. for medical technology, resource conservation, energy supply and storage. The modern software Pace3D performs material simulations on high-performance computers and enables a look inside the structure of materials. With the integration of the research data infrastructure Kadi4Mat, a data-driven design of tailor-made materials is achieved via sensitivity analyses. The eutectic colony structure of the high-performance material Ni-Al-Cr is given as an example: M. Kellner et al.: Influence of the melt composition on the formation of eutectic colonies: A large-scale phase-field study. (submitted) 

KIT

Albert Einstein predicted the effect of vacuum birefringence, which has not yet been proven. X-rays polarization measurements combined with a high intensity 300 terawatt laser at the European XFEL (X-ray free electron laser) could prove the effect in the next years. University Jena found, that X-ray lenses made out of polymer by KIT/IMT via KNMFi are worldwide the only ones free of birefringence and dichroism and thus the only lenses suitable for these polarisation experiments. Deep X-Ray Lithography (XRL), a KNMFi technology, was used to produce the X-ray lenses.