Under which conditions are EVs less expensive than diesel vehicles? What are the positive environmental effects? And what about their acceptance by users and reliability in practice? The RheinMobil project, co-ordinated by KIT, answers these questions in a study of a fleet test covering two and a half years of operation with 300,000 electrically driven kilometers. The results were presented at the International Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt.

Magnets are well-known from physics lessons at school, but they are hardly covered in chemistry lectures. By means of a chemical process, KIT researchers have succeeded in controlling magnetic properties in bulk ferromagnets. While physical processes may influence the orientation of the magnetic fields, the chemical process in this case controls magnetism in carefully chosen strongly ferromagnetic material systems.

Progress towards renewable energy sources is slow, in part because their efficiency is much lower than that of conventional energy sources. The efficiency of commercially available photovoltaic cells, for instance, is about 20%. Scientists at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have published an unconventional approach to increasing the efficiency of the panels. Optical invisibility cloaks guide sunlight around objects that cast a sh...

Information is the basis of smart mobility. IT can support the car driver in safe, inexpensive, and sustainable driving or organise reliable exchange of information among electric mobility users, cars, charging poles, fleet operators, workshops, and service providers. KIT’s BMBF-funded ELISE project presents an electronic system that acquires data in real time and exchanges them across system borders in a standardised manner.

The first all-optical permanent on-chip memory has been developed by scientists at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the universities of Münster, Oxford, and Exeter. This is an important step on the way towards optical computers. Phase change materials that change their optical properties depending on the arrangement of the atoms allow for the storage of several bits in a single cell.

Computer graphics today can produce amazingly photorealistic images. Many motives, however, require very long computation times. Researchers at KIT, Disney Research, Zurich, and Cornell University have now developed a process by which granular objects made of sand, snow or sugar, for instance, can be computed more quickly.

Every year, almost two million tons of electronic scrap arise in Germany. Printed electronics enhances the trend to throw used devices away by reducing production costs and opening up markets with disposable items, such as interactive packagings or smart band aids. Young researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT) have developed printed electronics made of compostable natural materials and processes for industrial production.

A snake moves without legs by the scales on its belly gripping the ground. It generates friction at the points needed to move forwards only and prevents its scales from being worn off by too much friction. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) researchers have found a way to transfer this feature to components of movable systems. In this way, durability of hip prostheses, computer hard disks or smartphones might be enhanced.

Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT) has purchased a HPC cluster solution consisting of more than 1,100 compute nodes, from HPC specialist Transtec. The solution is worth €6.9m and is the largest deal in the company's history. KIT is a technical university in south Germany's Baden-Württemberg and a national research lab within the Helmholtz Society. These research activities require the use of big data analytics and complex simulati...

Compact optical transmission possibilities are of great interest in fast, energy-efficient data exchange between electronic chips. One component serving this application is the Mach-Zehnder Modulator (MZM) which is able to convert electronic signals into optical signals. Scientists at the KIT and the ETH in Zurich developed a plasmonic MZM, only 12.5μm long, which converts digital electrical signals into optical signals at a rate of up to 108G...

How do catalytic converters work? Scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) studied the reactions under close-to-reality conditions: With the help of X-rays, they observed the interactions of the nitrogen monoxide pollutant molecule and of the reduction agent ammonia with iron and copper centers, i.e. transition metal ions in Fe-ZSM-5 and Cu-SSZ-13, where the reaction takes place.

The efficiency of perovskite-based solar cells has been improved significantly in recent years. On the way towards maturity, however, some challenges remain as yet unmastered. Scientists from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) are undertaking research to advance the development of perovskite solar cells. By using special thin-film processes, for example, material consumption and costs can be reduced.

Organic molecules allow producing printable electronics and solar cells with extraordinary properties. In spintronics, too, molecules open up the unexpected possibility of controlling the magnetism of materials and, thus, the spin of the flowing electrons. According to what is reported in Nature Materials by a German-French team of researchers, a thin layer of organic molecules can stabilise the magnetic orientation of a cobalt surface.

Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have developed a material suited for photovoltaics. For the first time, a functioning organic solar cell consisting of a single component has been produced on the basis of Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) compounds. The material is highly elastic and might also be used for the flexible coating of clothes and deformable components.

Researchers at KIT and Wadsworth Center, USA, have been exploring speech produced in the human cerebral cortex and recording brain waves associated with speech processes with electrodes located on the surface of the cortex. For the first time, they have shown that it is possible to reconstruct basic units, words and complete sentences of continuous speech from these brain waves and to generate the corresponding text.

  The Automotive Railway and Avionics Multicore Systems (ARAMiS) project has now developed demonstrators to show how multi-core processor technology can be integrated into safety-critical systems.

Exploration of new energy carriers and interim storage of sustainable energies are two big challenges of the Energiewende, the transformation of the energy system. At its ACHEMA booth, KIT will present the latest processes for this purpose. ACHEMA is scheduled to take place from 15th to 19th June in Frankfurt; KIT will be located at booth 9.2 D67.

Battery storage systems currently on the market differ considerably in terms of safety, price, performance, and, hence, economic efficiency. At Intersolar, the world’s leading exhibition for the solar industry in Munich, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) will present its latest research findings as to how efficient batteries should be designed and provide information on the reliable assessment of the performance of storage systems...

With its 3D printer for the micrometer scale, the KIT spinoff Nanoscribe has made its way into the final of the competition for the Deutscher Gründerpreis (German Startup Prize) 2015 in the category of ‘Shooting Star’. In the opinion of the jury, the company is one of the most successful German startups of the past years. Among the finalists in the startup category is RESTUBE, a startup of KIT students. Its self-inflatable life b...

Production of biogas from silage maize is booming, but also has its drawbacks. Maize monocultures block increasingly large areas for food production and result in a monotonous landscape. Unused grass from landscaping is an ecological alternative to maize, if economic drawbacks are compensated, reveals a recent study by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University of Hohenheim, which focused on locations in Baden-Württemberg.