ISC News

Dr. Jiajie Hou from the Interface Science Department of the Fritz Haber Institute has been awarded a prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship for her research project “oCEMBER2mc” that aims to investigate strategies for converting captured carbon dioxide into valuable chemicals. more

Yujie Peng defended her doctoral thesis at Technische Universität Berlin. She elucidated how surface structure, local chemical environment, and applied potential govern the in situ activation and structural evolution of copper- and cobalt-based electrocatalysts. more

Researchers from the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society have unveiled fundamental new insights into the working principles of fuel-cell catalysts. Their study, published in Nature Communications, reveals how multiple steps during the conversion of oxygen (O₂) to water (H₂O) give rise to the overall catalyst kinetics, and how this is related to changes at the catalyst-solution interface. The study constitutes a profound step forward in our understanding of multi-step electrocatalytic reactions. more

Dr. Chenyue Qiu has been awarded a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdocs. Supported by the prestigious fellowship, she recently started working in the electron microscopy group of Dr. See Wee Chee in the Interface Science Department at the Fritz Haber Institute. more

Researchers from the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society (FHI) have uncovered how carbonate molecules affect the conversion of CO₂ into valuable fuels on gold electrocatalysts. Their findings reveal key molecular mechanisms in CO₂ electrocatalysis and hydrogen evolution, pointing to new strategies for improving energy efficiency and reaction selectivity. more

Four scientists from the Fritz Haber Institute are on the list of Highly Cited Researchers 2025 published by Clarivate Analytics: the Director of the Interface Science Department, Prof. Beatriz Roldán Cuenya; two group leaders of the same Department, Dr. Janis Timoshenko and Dr. Arno Bergmann, and former Director Prof. Robert Schlögl. This result underscores the FHI’s internationally leading role in physics, chemistry, and materials science. more

Antonia Herzog, who completed her PhD in the Interface Science department in 2023, has been appointed as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) after two years of postdoctoral studies at MIT. With her success story, the young scientist is encouraging women in science to pursue an academic career. more

The Fritz Haber Institute is very pleased to welcome Prof. Tanja Cuk from the University of Colorado Boulder for a research stay at the institute as part of her Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award. The internationally renowned spectroscopist will be hosted by the departments of Prof. Beatriz Roldan Cuenya and Prof. Martin Wolf from August to December 2025. more

At the Annual Meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE) in Mainz in September 2025, Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldan Cuenya, our Managing Director and Director of the Interface Science Department, was ceremonially inducted into the ranks of ISE Fellows.  more

Researchers from the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society have unveiled new insights into the activity of catalysts used in green hydrogen production. Their study, published in Nature Chemistry, explores how the catalyst kinetics are related to an intricate interplay between interfacial solvent and chemical changes on the catalyst surface, potentially paving the way for more efficient energy conversion technologies. more

Scientists from the Interface Science Department at the Fritz Haber Institute have studied how applying pulsed electric potential treatments to copper single crystal surfaces as model catalysts can improve their ability to convert carbon dioxide (CO₂) into fuels like ethylene and ethanol. The key to achieve selectivity tunability relies in the control of the pulsed-induced structural and chemical catalyst transformations. This research offers insights which could help to reduce CO₂ emissions and producing renewable energy sources. more

Dr. Eduardo Ortega from the Interface Science Department won a Postdoc Award for the presentation of his research at this year’s Microscopy & Microanalysis Meeting in Salt Lake City. His work was selected from hundreds of submissions at the world's largest meeting on microscopy and microanalysis. more