Professorship for
Inorganic Chemistry
The Supraparticle Group
Our research
In the Supraparticle Group, we design highly functional supraparticles, i.e., particles of a few µm in size that are composed of nanoparticle (and molecular) building blocks.
These complex entities are achieved via forced assembly of the (nano) building blocks, mainly by using the technique of spray-drying.
We study how structure, besides (multimaterial) composition, of such supraparticles affects the interaction among the building blocks of these entities and how this leads to unique functionalities.
We exploit these findings for designing highly innovative communicating / interactive supraparticles and multifunctional adsorber / carrier and catalyst entities.
Many different material systems are studied in the group, but a special focus is on iron oxide nanoparticle-based magnetic systems and their characterization in particularly via magnetic particle spectroscopy (MPS), a to date rather unexplored approach that we pioneer.
Find out more, here.
Transfer to real-life application is achieved together with the Fraunhofer part of our group at Fraunhofer ISC in Würzburg.
Ultimately, via smart supraparticles, we aim at contributing to sustainability.
We have another freshly baked Doctor in the group: Philipp Groppe defended his Thesis on “Spray-dried nanoporous supraparticles as adjustable support structures for catalytically active materials” with great success. Congratulations, Dr. Groppe!
As proposed in the ERC SmartRust project, it is quite a puzzle to detangle magnetic intra- and inter-supraparticle interactions. With support from Noah Kent (MIT), we made a step further on this as described in our just accepted article in Small.
Wolf A., Heinlein M., Kent N., Müssig S., Mandel K...
We gained new insights into the key role of the binder material in suprabeads, i.e. supraparticles fixed on beads. This work was just accepted by ACS Applied Nano Materials.
Zimmermann T., Fischer C., Oppmann M., Wenderoth S., Winzer B., Somorowsky F., Vogel N., Mandel K., Wintzheimer S.*
Key Ro...
We are happy to welcome our new group member Romain.
Romain Conan completed his studies at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées and Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France, with an Engineering Diploma of physics and a Master of Science degree in Nanosciences.
He started his PhD at ...
We are happy to welcome our new group member Jakob.
Jakob Endres completed his studies at the University of Würzburg with a Master of Science degree in Functional Materials. During his studies, he focused on investigating smart materials and novel spectroscopic methods relevant for energy technol...
ACS just accepted our recent work with colleagues from the Fraunhofer ISC and Fraunhofer IMM as an article in Chem & Bio Engineering. It describes hydrogen peroxide producing supraparticles as tailorable photocatalysts for flow chemistry reactions.
Herbig B.,* Cermjani E., Hanselmann D., Schm...
Markus Heinlein completed his Master of Science degree this year in our group focusing on the relation of magnetic interactions within and between supraparticles.
Continuing with his research in the Supraparticle Group, he started his PhD thesis in November 2024 and will contribute to our efforts...
We say goodbye to Juanjo, who has been our colleague for the last couple months. He stayed in the Supraparticle Group as a visiting PhD student from Argentinia to study inductively heatable molecular switches based on co-doped ferrites and catechol derivatives coordination.
In a great collaboration with the team of Alan Lyons (City University of New York) and the colleagues from the Fraunhofer ISC, we demonstrate how to contribute to enhanced self-cleaning of glass, partly coated with dagger-shaped features from silica nanoparticles. The article was just accepted in So...
Congratulations Susanne and Karma Zuraiqi (RMIT) and who pulled this together, and Torben Daeneke, Ken Chiang, Julien Bachmann and Peter Wasserscheid who are co-CI's for this grant.
This mobility grant allows researchers from Germany and Australia to engage in an exchange of ideas regar...
