Technology Offers

Reversible adhesion can be used to transfer or to manipulate objects. Especially if the objects are small and/or fragile their manipulation become very challenging. Intermolecular forces such as Van-der-Waals can be used to achieve a strong adhesion between the objects. Moreover, surface functionalization and the creation of nano- and microstructures can be used to improve these adhesion properties. Unfortunately, the adhesion becomes insufficient if the surfaces are wet or rough. Another problems ...

"Novel first-in-class intra-nasally applicable safe recombinant "vir4vac" RNA vaccines constitute a very safe and efficacious way of preventing serious infections of respiratory corona and paramyxoviruses as well as other respiratory viruses.“

UV-B radiation is a major damaging agent causing damage to plants, tissues and human or animal skin upon exposure. To persist strong UV-B radiation plants produce additional antioxidant sunscreen pigments that belong to the chemical compound family of phenylpropanoids. Since many conventional compounds with sunscreen protection potential do not enter the market due to toxic side effects or they bear the risk to become environmental pollutants when accumulating in natural resources, application ...

Fibrosis is the excessive accumulation of extracellular matrix that leads to destruction of the tissue architecture and consequently organ failure. In the developed world, an estimated 45 % of all deaths resulted from severe fibrotic diseases. A wide range of chronic diseases are able to induce fibrosis such as hepatitis, pulmonary disease, scleroderma and cancer. Current therapies for fibrosis are limited and of low efficacy. Further research on fibrosis is required to understand disease progression ...

In contrast to target-based drug discovery, phenotypic screening discloses the effect of a compound on a biological system without revealing its mode of action or its interaction sites. Phenotypic screening has delivered several new valuable drugs, however, the major challenge remains target deconvolution (1). In recent years, “omics” techniques and bioinformatics have brought significant advances to target identification in drug discovery phenotypic screening. However, such analyses can become ...

The study of mechanical properties of materials at high temperatures at the microstructural length scale requires dedicated testing setups. An accurate measurement of the sample temperature is vital for reliable testing. Most of the successful current testing platforms record the temperatures of the sample and tip near the heating sources but not at the respective surface. As a consequence, due to spatial and temporal thermal gradients a reliable surface temperature cannot be measured today. Even ...

Conventional mechanical zippers find manifold applications for luggage, clothing or even industrial applications. However, their design features significant disadvantages. In particular, they require the use of both hands by the user to align the ends of the garment and lock the insertion pin into the slider. This mechanism can be prone to jamming and failure and more generally requires the user to free his or her hands. The user must further use one or both hands to move the slider along the ...

A family of 16-electron binary Ni(0)-stilbene complexes Ni(^Rstb)₃ as a new class of air-stable Ni(0) (pre)catalysts was developed.

Anti-IgG secondary antibodies are major tools for the detection or immobilization of primary antibodies in approaches such as western blotting, ELISA, Co-IP and immunofluorescence. Polyclonal anti-IgG secondary antibodies are produced in animals, such as mouse, rabbit, rat, and goat and are directed against the IgG classes of these animals. Thus, the generation of such secondary antibodies requires the keeping and use of a large number of animals, which is not only costly but also a major ethical ...

The development of the cation channel channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii by Prof. Ernst Bamberg and his colleagues and its application to light-induced modulation of neurons paved the way for the field of optogenetics.
Over time the light-gated cation channel channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) has become an indispensable tool in neuroscience. Based on the pioneering work on ChR2 new variants have emerged, differing in their spectrum of light absorption, their kinetic ...

Since 2000 bioinspired fibrillar dry adhesives have been studied intensively culminating in commercial products already available on the market. Currently known fibrillar adhesives are fully wetted by oils, leading to significantly decreased adhesion and friction performance. Therefore, a high demand exists for reversible dry fibrillar adhesives that can repel oil-like liquids and adhere strongly to surfaces wetted by them.

To meet the aforementioned challenges, an extraordinary fibrillar ...

Prof. Klaus Müllen an co-workers at the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research developed a straightforward C-H borylation at the 2- and 2,7-positions of pyrene derivatives. The small neutral organic molecules show sharp fluorescence emission peeks between 400-550 nm and high photoluminiscense quantum yields.

Fluorescent dyes are widely used as indispensable markers in biology, optical microscopy, and analytical chemistry. The availability and the proper choice of the dye is a key factor to success of the entire labelling and imaging procedure. Due to superior brightness and photostability, synthetic dyes often represent an attractive alternative to fluorescent proteins.

Among the multitude of fluorophores reported so far, only rhodamines, carbopyronines, and silicon-rhodamines bearing a carboxyl ...

Evaporation cells for thin film deposition often operate under ultrahigh vacuum or special gas atmosphere, requiring long growth campaigns and short maintenance openings to preserve the best possible vacuum environment. The deposition leads to coating of the inner chamber walls, the removal of which is difficult and very time consuming. Growth control and interruptions during material deposition may require frequent operation of the closure device or shutter. The commonly used shutter (Fig. 1) ...

Prof. Kai Sundmacher and co-workers at the MPI for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems developed a novel core-shell catalyst design with a highly active catalyst core surrounded by an inert, low-permeability shell. The new catalyst design leads to an intrinsic heat management that avoids hotspots in strongly exothermic reactions. This allows faster reactor start-up and shut-down and makes the catalysts suitable for rapid load changes in discontinuous processes.

Prof. Klaus-Richard Pörschke and co-workers from the MPI for Coal Research developed a highly hydrophobic perfluoroaryl borate (FAB) ligand for trapping the radioative 134/137 Cs isotopes with 100% specificity. The novel approach could improve the decontamination of humans compared to the administration of so called insouble Prussian blue currently in use.

Light microscopy enables fascinating insights into the microcosm of life. It is one of the key techniques in life science and provides access to a better understanding of biology across many orders of magnitude in time and space. The use of visible light allows for minimally invasive imaging - even of living cells - and direct observation with the human eye. However, the use of visible light limits the resolution of the image obtained to about half the wavelength of the used light. The limiting ...

Engineering light distributions in a three-dimensional volume to achieve selective illumination profiles is an instrumental task shared by many optical and microscopy techniques. The optimization of the light distribution can lead to significant enhancement of relevant performance figures and ultimately to the extension of the instrument or experimental protocol capabilities^1,2,3,4,5. Targeted illumination profiles can be used either to mechanically interact with molecules at nanometer ...

Resistance induced heating of electrical wiring during operation is one of the limiting factors to design high-power electromagnetic coils. The commonly used approach to eliminate the heating of electrical wires is to introduce a hollow conductive copper wire into electrical wiring and to cool this wire with water. Unfortunately, this approach is not applicable for high power density electromagnetic coil as well as for coils with small dimensions. Another approach to enhance the cooling properties ...

An Enhancement Cavity (EC) with at least one toroidal and/or cylindrical mirror is described. This allows for an arbitrary beam ellipticity of the eigenmode. In particular at a stability edge, where the ellipticity diverges with purely spherical optics, a round beam can be obtained.

Prof. Klaus-Richard Pörschke and co-workers at the MPI for Coal Research developed a novel cyclic process for the quantitative extraction of cesium with 100% selectivity from any given aqueous or acidic solution, irrespective of the other components.

Semiconductor nanowires are of vital importance for many applications, such as flexible electronics, photonics, sensors, and energy harvesting and storage devices. As standard fabrication procedure, vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) growth employs metal catalyst particles (such as gold) as seeds for growth of nanowires. The seeds are deposited on a solid substrate, melted by heating and then exposed to a gas atmosphere containing source materials of the semiconductor. When the metal droplets are supersaturated, ...

A double KO, a conditional KO as well as single KO mouse models for FFA2 and FFA3 (free fatty acid receptors 2 and 3), novel targets for diabetes therapies.

The cellular identity of mature cells that are confined in a specialized genetic expression profile can be overcome by introducing just a few genes that encode for so-called reprogramming factors [1]. By means of this intervention, also known as reprogramming, the cells then become pluripotent and represent induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) [1]. Nowadays, numerous new cell culture models have been established based on reprogramming protocols that yield iPS cells. Such cell culture models ...

Precise genome editing demands for homology-directed repair (HDR) by aiming to introduce a new double stranded DNA substituting for a homologous sequence but partially defect one. This substrate dependent reaction does compete with direct non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) of the double strand breaks. NHEJ is error-prone and is therefor mainly used for gene inactivation.
The rate of NHEJ is directly limiting the rate of HDR. For this reason HDR in vitro does occur on a very low level only and ...

We offer a new simple and low cost technology to fabricate graphene-encapsulated metal or metal compound nanoparticles. The resulting hybrid nanoparticles are protected by granted substance claims in US, CN, TW and EP (DE, FR, GB, BE). Currently the patent protected graphene coated nano particles are discussed as high performance electrode materials in the lithium ion battery business (for example Samsung's "Graphene Balls").

The CRISPR-Cas system is a powerful tool for site-specific genome editing. It allows for the inactivation or substitution of entire genes. However, most hereditary diseases in humans are caused by single point mutations, the correction of which requires only subtle changes to the DNA. Recently, base editors (BEs) were developed that allow the introduction of selective nucleotide substitutions. A Cas9 enzyme is fused to a nucleobase deaminase catalysing C-to-T mutations (by C-to-U deamination) ...

Ultrafast amplifier systems providing high average powers (>10W) at repetition rates in the kHz regime suffer from severe accumulation of nonlinear phase inside the laser gain medium and other optical components within the amplifier. Implementation of chirped pulse amplification (CPA) constitutes a well-established method to reduce the peak intensity of the laser pulse during the amplification process [1, 2]. However, state of the art laser materials supporting high average output powers such ...

Screening the level of specific blumenols in plant leaves allows simple implementation in marker assisted breeding and high-throughput analysis.

The efficiency of solar cells is strongly affected by local inhomogeneities. Especially inhomogeneities of the dark-current voltage (I-V) characteristic are of interest: The local dark current-voltage characteristic is a measure for the local recombination properties of the solar cell. Lock-in thermography performed in the dark (DLIT) can be used to detect and evaluate locally increased dark current densities.

The invention relates to a monolithic optical frequency comb generator. Furthermore, the invention relates to a method of generating an optical frequency comb.

Biological fixation of CO₂ is an important process carried out by plants and several microorganisms, which can be harnessed for sustainable, biobased production of fuels and chemicals. Particularly, the fixation of CO₂ by autotrophic microorganisms such as cyanobacteria and microalgae can be employed for converting CO₂ into value-added products, such as commodity chemicals or fuels. However, the sustainable autotrophic production ...

A tRNA^ALA heteroplasmy mouse model to study mitochondrial disorders such as encephalomyophathies, that recapitulates symptoms as observed in human patients with disease-causing mutation in the same mitochondrial gene.

An efficient system to monitor and control animal behavior in wildlife as well as in laboratory settings

A group of scientists at the MPI for Polymer Research in Mainz developed nano-graphene structures that can be used as a new class of fluorophores for super-resolution microscopy (SMLM and STED).

They perform like hybrids of organic dyes and QDs: they have excellent environment-independent blinking properties, emit high photon numbers, display high photo-stability, possess low toxicity, have a molecular size below 2 nm, and have narrow excitation and emission spectra.

These nanographene ...

A promising target to develop treatment options for osteoporosis and other disease conditions associated with bone loss

The development of the cation channel channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii by Prof. Ernst Bamberg and his colleagues, and its application to light-induced modulation of neurons paved the way for the field of optogenetics.
Over time the light-gated cation channel channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) has become an indispensable tool in neuroscience. Based on the pioneering work on ChR2 new variants have emerged, differing in their spectrum of light absorption, their kinetic ...

Biomarkers of ageing have long been sought after to help assess the biological age and general health status of individuals. Considerable efforts have been invested to identify such biomarkers, including physiologic readouts, metabolic parameters, glycomic profiles and others. Nevertheless, markers with strong predictive power have remained elusive.

Work in model organisms has identified several conserved signaling pathways that extend life span, such as reduced insulin/IGF signaling and ...

The Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in collaboration with the Institute of Biotechnology and Drug Research (IBWF) developed novel lignin nanocarriers that can be used for smart pesticide delivery in plants for crop protection. The nanocarriers are characterised by a narrow size distribution and an easy manufacturing, furthermore, they can be loaded with hydrophobic pesticides. Injected to plants, the nanocarriers act as a safe store of pesticide, which is released in situ by lignin degrading ...

Researchers of the Max-Planck-Institute for Colloids and Interfaces and the Paul-Ehrlich-Institute (PEI) have developed a novel codon-specific elongation model (COSEM), that is based on the question how codon bias affects protein expression in combination with a deep understanding of protein synthesis.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) requires optimal radio-frequency (RF) coil performance that ensures the highest RF magnetic field per unit power delivered to the coil, while maintaining the highest achievable RF field homogeneity. For MRI at high magnetic field level, it is important to use a multi-channel transmit coil for producing the desired RF field. However, it is impossible to design a multi-channel coil without considerable coupling between its coil elements. The major challenge in multi-channel ...

The state of an electron is completely defined by its momentum and spin. In processes like electron diffraction or photoemission electron ensembles are generated which have a characteristic 3D distribution of momentum and spin. To examine such events the three components of the momentum vector have to be measured. Up to now, the momentum distribution of an ensemble of charged particles was typically measured using energy-dispersive spectrometers based on sequential approaches (sequentially changing ...

Fluorescent dyes are widely used as indispensable markers in biology, optical microscopy, and analytical chemistry. In particular, the sensitive and stable imaging of cellular components depends on the favourable combination of chemical, biological and physical factors. The availability and proper choice of fluorescent dyes is a key factor to success in the entire labelling and imaging procedure. Due to their superior brightness and photostability, synthetic dyes represent an attractive alternative ...

Mesoporous materials present a large surface-to-volume ratio providing sites for catalysis, molecular separation, adsorption or chemical sensing. Some of the classical mesoporous materials employed include silica, alumina, zirconia, zeolites, and other diverse oxides such Ti or Co, and they are synthetized by routes as self-assembly, sol-gel, spray drying and some variations of these methods known in the state of the art. Additionally, some elements of the platinum group such as Pd, Ru, and their ...

Speckle interferometry is an established metrology technique for the characterization of rough objects. Deformations of rough objects under a load can be determined, as well as – with the help of an additional second wavelength – the surface shape of the object under test. As an illustration, Figure 1 (left) shows the so called raw phase as a result of a deformation measurement on a metal plate. The shape and the density of the fringes indicate the response of the metal plate to the load.
Owing ...

We present a sensor for the carrier-envelope phase of a few-cycle femtosecond laser. The sensor uses the electron current emitted from a nanoscale metal tip onto which we focus high-repetition-rate laser pulses.

Possible applications of this sensor are in the field of the technique of controlling and using pulse lasers, in particular used for measuring or high-power irradiation purposes.

The size of such a simple stand-alone sensor device for the carrier-envelope phase could be in ...

A simple, one-step assay for reliable measurements of NAD(H) and NADP(H) in complex samples, with various applications such as enzymatic assays, clinicals tests, and as point of care tests in the field of ageing.

This invention relates to means and methods for conjugating/attaching target molecules such as proteins to a label and/or carrier.

SUMOvera enables versatile purification strategies for broad applications in eukaryotic hosts.

An apparatus and method allowing high throughput collection of X-ray diffraction data at room temperature.

The presented technology offers an enhanced streaming rendering pipeline that enables the display of high fidelity, high framerate and high solution for noval views in real time on thin lightweight HMDs suitable especially for VR experiences.

How does it work?

The key idea of this technology is based on a novel algorithm for Potentially Visible Set (PVS) creation: the camera offset space (COS), which for a given point on the image plane provides information under which camera ...

The invention relates to a new, ultracompact non-invasive medical ventilation system. The BIPAP (Biphasic Positive Airway Pressure) ventilation unit, of size and weight of a tennis ball, is easy to handle and allows low-budget mass production. It can be powered by a rechargeable battery-pack – a great advantage in case of mobile use or damaged/unstable infrastructure leading to frequent blackouts. These benefits, ...

Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) facilitates efficient production of thin films using a laser ablation technique. Targets are selected according to the coating desired. Multiple targets are either moved mechanically to the incidence area, or they are fixed so that the laser beam is alternatively focused on each of them. Multiple targets are, however, known to cause discontinuities, whereas single multicomponent target usually doesn’t ensure compositional homogeneity. The technology presented here ...

In arid and semiarid regions biological soil crusts (BSC) cover about 1/3 of the soil surface. As far as it is known, these BSC (consisting of cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, bryophytes, and other bacteria living in contact with soil particles) are crucial for the global terrestrial carbon and nitrogen cycle. The water status plays a major role, since their water content directly controls the activity of these poikilohydric organisms.