Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie GmbH (HZB) is a legally independent member of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres (HGF), which is Germany’s largest organization with more than 40,000 staff members working to solve society’s grand challenges in the fields of Energy, Aeronautics, Space and Transport. HZB has around 1,200 coworkers distributed over two locations and is financed by the German Federal Government (90%) and the State of Berlin (10%).
The HZB research portfolio includes solar cells, solar fuels, thermoelectrics, and materials for new, energy-efficient information technologies (spintronics) or electrochemical energy storage. It also operates the BESSY II synchrotron facility, where the Energy Materials In-Situ Lab (EMIL) and the Berlin Joint Lab for Electrochemical Interfaces (BElChem) offer state-of-the-art facilities for research on energy materials. Every year around 3,000 scientists use the HZB infrastructure facilities.
Contribution to SunCoChem
With a strong expertise in the development of novel metal oxides as photoelectrodes for solar water splitting, HZB Institute for Solar Fuels will develop and scale-up the photoanodes for water oxidation in SunCoChem, which will be integrated with other cell components from the partners. We also operate an advanced photoelectrochemical analytics lab, in which the performance and stability of SunCoChem’s prototype module will be conducted.