KIT Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany

The KIT, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, represents the cooperation of the Universität Karlsruhe with the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. Both partners are joining their forces in KIT in order to achieve an unprecedented quality of cooperation. With roundabout 8000 employees and an annual budget of about 700 million Euros, KIT has the potential of becoming a leading institution in selected science disciplines in the world.

Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe works on research and development problems of public interest, in the fields of technology and environment. Its "Research for Environmentally Sustainable High Technologies" program concentrates on 11 programs in five main areas. With a staff of 3500, the FZK part of KIT is one of the largest non-commercial science and engineering research institutions in Germany. About 130 researchers are working at the Institute of Nanotechnology, INT, which is one of the largest activities in the field of Nanotechnology. Several activities on hydrogen storage have been accomplished at the INT. The main topic of these works is the question how hydrogen behaves in nanoscale materials and their grain boundaries and whether nanomaterials with tunable electric properties are suitable for hydrogen storage. The institute has also developed synthesis methods for novel nanocrystalline aluminum hydrides. The work has been performed in collaboration with several research institutes in Germany, Europe and the USA.

Dr. Wiebke Lohstroh is an expert in hydrogen induced changes of the physical properties (structural, electronic and magnetic properties) of thin films. She received her Doctorate in Physics from Göttingen University (1999). During her stay as a post-doctoral fellow in Oxford (group of Prof. R.A. Cowley, Oxford University) and Amsterdam (group of Prof. R. Griessen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) her research was focussed on thin films of hydrogen storage materials using scattering methods and optical photometry. In 2005 she joined the Institute of Nanotechnology at Karlsruhe Research Center where she focuses on the mechanistic origins of hydrogen sorption in complex metal hydrides.

Dr. Maximilian Fichtner is group leader at KIT/INT since 2001. His main interest is the development and investigation of nanoscale materials for hydrogen storage based on chemisorption and physisorption of hydrogen. He has published more than 50 research papers in refereed journals and books. The group was respectively is participating in the EU-IPs “StorHy” and in “NESSHY” , with contributions on alanates and amides. Maximilian Fichtner coordinates the EU CP NANOHY.

Experimental facilities: high energy ball mills, Sievert’s apparatus, high pressure DSC, high vacuum TDS

M. Fichtner, Nanotechnological Aspects in Materials for Hydrogen Storage: Invited Review, Advanced Engineering Materials 6 (2005) 433.

M. Fichtner, J. Engel O. Fuhr, O. Kircher, O. Rubner, Nanocrystalline Aluminum Hydrides for Hydrogen Storage, Materials Science and Engineering B 108 (2004) 42-47.

W. Lohstroh, R. J. Westerwaal, B. Noheda, S. Enache, I. A. M. E. Giebels, B. Dam, and R. Griessen Self-organized layered hydrogenation in black Mg2NiHx switchable mirrors, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 197404 (2004).

Contact:

Dr. Wiebke Lohstroh
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Institute for Nanotechnology
Postfach 3640
D-76021 Karlsruhe
Germany

Phone +49 (7247) 82-6377
Fax +49 (7247) 82-6368

http://www.fzk.de/int