Welcome to the Institute of Nanotechnology

Anastasia August, KIT

Anastasia August of INT continued her successful Science Slam performances. On June 26th she won the Science Slam of the Joachim Herz Foundation in Hamburg and on June 27th she won the Dr.-Lörcher Award of the NaturVision Slam in Ludwigsburg.

Sandra Göttisheim, KIT

Prof. Jürgen Janek from Justus-Liebig University at Gießen and head of the BELLA Laboratory at KIT has been awarded the "Heinrich-Hertz-Preis" by the EnBW Foundation for his contributions to sustainable energy supply with his work on electrochemical energy storage.

Lena Pilz, KIT

Combining automated synthesis, machine learning and theoretical insights scientists from IFG, INT and collaborators from Germany and Brazil achieved a thin film of a metal-organic framework (MOF) material that displays metallic conductivity of a type similar to graphene.

Laila Tkotz, KIT

In May the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) announced the Clusters of Excellence that are funded for the period of seven years starting January 2026. The clusters 3D Matter Made to Order (3DMM2O)  and Post Lithium Storage (POLiS) with significant INT contributions were successful in obtaining a continuation of funding. 

KIT, A. Bramsiepe

Prof. Pascal Friederich, Associated Group leader at INT, received the Manfred-Fuchs-Preis for junior researchers awarded by the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften for his work on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for the development on new molecules and materials. His research allows to accelerate the discovery of materials for various applications.

Leslie Hawthorne Klingler

Prof. Horst Hahn, former Executive Director of the Institute of Nanotechnology and KIT Distinguished Senior Fellow, began a new role as Special Advisor at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He will serve as the strategic architect for the university’s fusion energy research initiatives.

KIT, Uni Marburg

Researchers from KIT and the Philipps-Universität Marburg have isolated an all-metal aromatic bismuth ring sandwiched in a cobalt-based complex, defining a new era of aromatic compounds with potential applications in catalysis and electronic devices (Nature Chemistry, 2025).

Marco Schilling

The Hector Science Award 2024 by the Hector Fellow Academy for Stefanie Dehnen (INT) and Matthias H. Tschöp (TU München) honours outstand­ing research in the fields of inorganic chemistry and mater­ial research (Dehnen) as well as diabetes and obesity research (Tschöp).

Authors, KIT

Researchers from the US, China and the KIT have studied negatively charged bismuth clusters and found a remarkable stability of Bi-18 clusters to oxidation despite the existence of an unpaired electron. It suggests a structural route to larger clusters with interesting electronic properties.

KIT, JLU, Peking University

Researchers from KIT, JLU Gießen and Peking University demonstrated an all-solid-state
lithium–sulfur battery (ASSLSB) with a redox mediator that displays ultrafast charging capability, high specific capacity and an ultrastable cycling performance. This might pave the way to batteries with high specific energy, high safety and low cost.

Kurt Fuchs/HI ERN

A closed-loop workflow that combines high-throughput synthesis of organic semiconductors to create large datasets and Bayesian optimization to discover new hole-transporting materials with tailored properties for solar cell applications was used to identify and synthesize a series of high-performance molecules.

KIT, Anastasia August

Dr. Anastasia August won first prize in three Science Slams at Eislingen, Heidelberg and Karlsruhe with her talk about harvesting solar energy by example of a polar bear, demonstrating her impressive talent in science communication. We congratulate Anastasia to her success and are proud to have her in the INT team.

Xuchen Wang and Harbin Engineering University

Researchers from INT in the group of Prof. Carsten Rockstuhl and Harbin Engineering University showed that the momentum band gap of photonic time crystals can be drastically expanded by temporal variations in a resonant material. The resonance can emerge from a suitably spatially structured material like an optical metasurface, thus paving the way towards the first experimental realizations of photonic time crystals.

Jonathan Schneider, KIT

By introducing connections beyond nearest-neighbor elements researchers in the group of Prof. Martin Wegener managed to design a metamaterial using 3D laser microprinting that displays anomalous frozen evanescent phonons to achieve nonlocal stress and stretching response which could be used for remote mechanical sensing.

KIT

Researchers from INT together with colleagues from the China, Colombia and the US have combined in-situ scanning transmission electron microscopy and atomistic simulations to elucidate the mechanisms of grain rotation in nanocrystalline Platinum.

KIT

This symposium aims to honor the scientific achievements of Prof. Annie Powell on the occasion of her 65th birthday through presentations by long-standing collaborators and friends, recognizing her strong commitment to equality and diversity with respect to gender and ethnicity.

Chem4Quant

The newly proposed Cluster of Excellence Chemical Design of Highly Precise Quantum Architectures (Chem4Quant) is a collaboration of KIT, the University of Stuttgart and Ulm University. It aims at quantum architectures with molecular structures to develop novel quantum devices and to implement first components for the future quantum internet.

3DMM2O

The DFG Cluster of Excellence 3D Matter Made to Order (3DMM2O) is a collaboration of KIT and Heidelberg University. It aims to establish scalable digital 3D Additive Manufacturing from the molecular to the macroscopic scale. This approach converts digital information into functional materials, devices and systems “made to order.”

POLiS

The DFG Cluster of Excellence Post Lithium Storage (POLiS) is a collaboration of KIT, Ulm University, the ZSW and the University of Giessen. POLiS aims to develop the necessary new battery materials and technology concepts beyond lithium for efficient and sustainable storage of electrical energy.

Christine Liebhardt, Uni Ulm

Prof. Maximilian Fichtner, Director of the Helmholtz Institute Ulm (HIU) and since more than twenty years affiliated with the INT, was awarded the Wissenschaftspreis of the City of Ulm for his outstanding research on electrochemical storage and his contributions to scientific communication as an expert on this topic within the German speaking countries.

Oliver Townrow

Dr. Oliver Townrow will start his independent career at INT, funded by both the VCI Liebig Fellowship and the KIT YIG Prep Pro funded fellowship. The Townrow research group will utilise the direct method metal vapour synthesis (MVS) to target novel complexes containing metals across the periodic table in their zero-oxidation state. These will then be explored as soluble Single-Atom Sources to prepare functional organometallics.

KIT

This 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 the lattice distortions of these materials. The emphasis lies on ionic and covalent ceramic materials.

Dr. Johannes Richers | Visual Science Communication

The proposal "Chemical Design of Highly Precise Quantum Architectures" (Chem4Quant) was selected by the DFG expert council to enter a full proposal for the "Clusters of Excellence" funding line. The initiative by the KIT, the University of Stuttgart and the University of Ulm was headed for the KIT by Prof. Mario Ruben of INT.

Nature / AOC, KIT

In organometallic chemistry, so-called sandwich complexes always displayed linear chain structures. Now researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Philipps-Universität Marburg have formed multi-level sandwich complexes into nanoscale rings and named them  "cyclocenes". The work has been published in Nature.

Stefanie Dehnen, KIT

For her pioneering research on molecular multinary cluster nanoarchitectures for applications in catalysts, white-light emitters, and battery materials Prof. Dr. Stefanie Dehnen was awarded the Alexander Todd-Hans Krebs Lectureship by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh).

Queensland University of Technology

Prof. Dr. Barner-Kowollik won the Centenary Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) for the development and photophysical understanding of precision macromolecular photochemistry, and for excellence in communication. He and his team developed the ‘action plot analysis’ to understand photochemical processes in the realm of polymer chemistry with never-before-seen precision.

Dr. Jens Bauer, KIT

Using a hybrid organic-inorganic polymer resin as starting material the group of Dr. Jens Bauer succeeded in 3D printing of silicon dioxide nanostructures without the need of a high-temperature sintering process, as reported in Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.abq3037 )