Press releases

Green hydrogen - produced from water electrolysis by using sustainable electricity - is getting more attention due to its potential to be used as energy carrier as well as building block for various industrial processes. Among both half-reactions of water electrolysis, Oxygen Evolution Reaction (OER) is kinetically more challenging and it requires advances in the development of innovative electrocatalysts. more

A team lead by scientists from the MPI CPfS developed a novel experimental method that provides direct images of excited states in a transition metal compound without the need for complex calculations. This constitutes a major step for the understanding of the electronic structure and the rich physics of these materials.   more

Topological materials are characterised by unique electronic and physical properties that are determined by the underlying topology of their electronic systems. Scientists from the Max Planck Institutes for Microstructure Physics (Halle) and for Chemical Physics of Solids (Dresden) have now discovered that (TaSe₄)₂I is the first material in which a charge density wave induces a phase transition between the semimetal to insulator state. more

Claudia Felser, director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, is one of the mostly cited researchers in the world in the category Physics. This is apparent from the list Highly Cited Researchers for 2020 which was published by the company Clarivate Analytics. more

For the period of 2020 to 2024, Dr. Gudrun Auffermann has been elected Equal Opportunity Commissioner and Renate Hempel-Weber (Physics of Quantum Materials) has been elected Deputy. We congratulate and wish all the best for the exercise of this important office. more

Traditionally, the quantum Hall effect has exclusive been associated with two-dimensional metals. Now, scientists at the MPI CPfS found signatures of an unconventional Hall response in the quantum limit of the bulk metal HfTe5, adjacent to the three-dimensional quantum Hall effect of a single electron band at low magnetic fields. more

The intricate interplay of band-formation and electron correlation effects in uranium heavy fermion compounds is subject of an ongoing debate. Here scientists from MPI CPfS in Dresden, University of Cologne, University of Erlangen, Heidelberg University, University of California at San Diego, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Institute of Low Temperature & Structure Research in Wroclaw, Van-der-Waals-Zeeman Institute in Amsterdam, and the German Synchrotron in Hamburg (PETRA-III/DESY) gained new and unexpected insight from advanced spectroscopies on isostructural members of the UM₂Si₂ family with different properties. more

Johannes Gooth, Leiter der unabhängigen Max-Planck-Forschungsgruppe „Nanostrukturierte Quantenmaterie“ am MPI für Chemische Physik fester Stoffe in Dresden, erhält den Rudolf-Kaiser-Preis für den „erstmaligen experimentellen Nachweis sowie die weitergehende Charakterisierung der axialen Gravitations-Anomalie in Weyl-Halbmetallen“. more

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Researchers demonstrate new high-throughput method for discovering magnetic topology more

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Chiral crystals that have a distinct handedness have recently emerged as one of  the most exciting new classes of topological materials. An international research team from institutions in Germany, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and China has now demonstrated that their crystal handedness directly determines how quasiparticles propagate and scatter at impurities in such materials. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, represents a significant advance towards novel chiral electronic devices. more

In topological materials, electrons can display behaviour that is fundamentally different from that in ‘conventional’ matter, and the magnitude of many such ‘exotic’ phenomena is directly proportional to an entity known as the Chern number. New experiments establish for the first time that the theoretically predicted maximum Chern number can be reached — and controlled — in a real material. more

Electrons in “chiral crystals”, solid-state materials with definite “handedness”, can behave in unexpected ways. An interdisciplinary team from research institutions in Germany and China has realized now a theoretically predicted peculiar electronic state in a chiral compound, PtGa, from the class of topological materials. The study which was published in the journal Nature Communications allows a fundamental understanding of the electronic properties of this novel semimetal. more

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