NEWS
03/2025
It's award and fellowship time: Christoph received the Carl-Duisberg-Gedächtnispreis and Julian became a member of the MPGC.
02/2025
Matthias received the best presentation award at the KCT2025 (out of ~50 PhD talks), introducing the audience to our Coulombic dyad approach. Congratulations!
02/2025
The local FCI fellow meeting took place in Mainz, organized by Christoph. We had a day full of lively interactions and scientific exchange with participants from Frankfurt, Mainz, Heidelberg, Siegen, Würzburg, Gießen and Bonn.
01/2025
A video dealing with photochemical energy storage with our recent contribution to sensitized MOST systems is online @ SWR Wissen. Many thanks to Till for the preparation and Pascal Kiss for visiting us in Mainz.
Also, you can read and hear about our approach at Tagesschau.de.
12/2024
Our group's Christmas symposium was a success - a day full of short talks, the traditional lifetime quiz, Pizza, a BashZone competition and a visit of the Christmas market in Mainz.
10/2024
Christoph received the prestigious FCI Dozentenpreis.
Sakura from the Nobuhiro Yanai lab (Univeristy of Tokyo) will stay in the group for a joint project on upconverting materials.
Christoph received a Young Investigator Award from the Beilstein Institute during the conference "Harnessing Light Energy with Molecules".
09/2024
The 29th Lecture Conference on Photochemistry (LCP 2024) with almost 200 participants has come to an end. Many thanks to Julian, Matthias, Sophie, Till, Arne and Johanna for being the main organizers in the background (as well as Sibylle, who is not on the foto).
09/2024
Our paper introducing the concept of Coulombic dyads as promising photocatalyst class has been accepted in JACS. Read the press release here.Congtatulations, Matthias!
The first contribution to the #MOST community from the Kerzig lab has just been accepted in Angewandte Chemie. Many thanks to 1st author (and 1st time co-corresponding author) Till and the Ihmels group. Read the press release here.
08/2024
The first Doctor of the group: Sophie defended her PhD thesis very successfully.
07/2024
Till, Matthias and Christoph contributed to the Sustainable Chemistry Summer School organized by Faculty 09 at JGU Mainz! We have shown that photochemistry can contribute to the sustainable chemistry of the future and introduced the visiting students to some techniques in the laser lab.
07/2024
Matthias got a poster award at the PhotoIUPAC in Valencia presenting our results on Coulombic dyads.
Congratulations!
06/2024
The new chapter that we wrote for an educational transient absorption setup from Thorlabs is online
(https://www.thorlabs.de/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=14444, accessible in
German and English via "download manual"). Hopefully many students will be able to learn more about
time-resolved spectroscopy with photoactive metal complexes in the near future. Congratulations, Katharina.
05/2024
Some new students arrived in the group. Welcome, Lars, Daniil and Jannick.
Furthermore, David rejoined the group.
03/2024
The Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation will support our research activities through an Exploration Grant, which will allow us to explore novel applications with photoactive metal complexes and two-photon mechanisms (this time it is not about photo(redox)catalysis).
03/2024
Registrations and abstract submissions for the LCP2024 are open. We are looking forward to welcoming up to 220 photochemists @JGUMainz. gdch.de/photo2024
02/2024
Matthias has been selected as a junior member of the Gutenberg Academy Honors Program.
Congratulations - a well-deserved recognition!
01/2024
Our collaborative paper with the Hansmann lab (TU Dortmund) has been accepted in JACS.
12/2023
Sophie received a poster award at the Christmas Symposium in Basel. Congratulations!
Kai submitted his MEd thesis, in which he developed experiments for the new sustainable
chemistry lab course.
11/2023
We had to say goodbye to Felix, who is now working in the Troian-Gautier group in Belgium with a prestigious postdoc fellowship. However, the paper from his short-term postdoc with us just came out in Nanoscale. Congratulations Felix!
09/2023
After very successful BSc theses with us, both Nico and Katharina have been awarded a "Deutschlandstipendium". Congrats!
08/2023
Rebecca Full joins the group for a research internship. Welcome, Rebecca.
07/2023
Matthias receives a prestigious Kekulé PhD fellowship from the FCI. Congratulations!
05/2023
David successfully defended his thesis and a collaborative paper with the Gilmour lab has been accepted. It's time for the 1st BBQ in the summer term.
Our project within SFB1552 has been selected for funding. Stay tuned for "unusual" systems for light-driven hydrogen generation. Tailor-made supramolecular structures and defects will be the key to success.
03/2023
Christoph received the prestigious ADUC award (at the Chemiedozententagung in Dresden) and
a review on vis-to-UV UC that we wrote with the Yanai lab has been published in Angewandte.
Furthermore, Matthias and Christoph attended a very well-organized Lorentz workshop on
photocatalysis. Exciting semester break!
02/2023
Dr. Felix Glaser arrived in Mainz as the 1st postdoc of the group. Welcome Felix.
01/2023
A new paper has been accepted. This time a collaborative project with the Heinze and Manolikakes labs, to which Arne significantly contributed with mechanistic studies using transient absorption spectroscopy.
12/2022
Till received this year's prize for the best chemistry-related M.Sc. thesis of our Faculty.
We had a very nice Christmas party/seminar with a kinetics quiz, bowling, cookies and some cups of "Glühwein" at the X-mas market.
Our laser setup is now capable of measuring samples at 77K owing to a new Dewar with cuvette (or EPR tube) holder. Let the phosphorescence begin, not only for metal complexes ...
11/2022
Our collaborative paper with the Yanai lab, which is also one main project of Till's PhD, has been published in Angewandte Chemie. The press release can be found here.
09/2022
Another DFG project dealing with highly reactive triplet states and unusual energy transfer photochemistry has been selected for funding.
The GDCh Photochemistry conference "is coming home". We are looking forward to a great photochemistry meeting in Mainz, which will take place in September 2024.
Matthias successfully defended his MSc thesis. Congratulations!
Luckily, he will re-join the group as a PhD student in a few weeks.
08/2022
The summer term is over, but it is never getting boring.
Christoph organized an FCI PhD fellow meeting in Mainz and we had a nice group trip (see figure above).
07/2022
Arne's 1st first-author paper has been published with contributions by former BSc student Julius and current MSc student Matthias. Great teamwork!
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2022/DT/D2DT01157C
05/2022
Till receives a prestigious PhD fellowship from the DBU. Congratulations!
Nico Perez Lopez joins our group for his BSc project. Glad to have you onboard, Nico.
04/2022
Katharina Hermainski joins our group for her BSc thesis. Welcome Katharina!
02/2022
Our visiting PhD student arrived in Mainz. He came from Valencia and his stay is supported by the Erasmus+ program. Welcome, Jorge!
02/2022
A nice paper on energy transfer catalysis by the Opatz group has been
published, including some mechanistic studies from our group. Thank you
for your hard work Till.
https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/chem.202104329
01/2022
The new year starts with a nice surprise. Christoph has become an elected board member of the photochemistry section of the GDCh.
11/2021
Till's 1st first-author paper on blue-to-UV upconversion has been accepted by J. Mat. Chem. C and we are about to install a second Nd:YAG laser for our laser flash photolysis setup.
08/2021
Julius' bachelor thesis has come to an end - a very successful end with novel metal complexes possessing excited-state lifetimes on the order of 100 microseconds. Well done Julius!
07/2021
Till successfully defended his thesis. Congratulations! We are looking forward to September, when you will
rejoin our group.
06/2021
Till submitted his outstanding M.Sc. thesis and Sophie's paper - the 1st one of our young group - has been accepted. Two great achievements. Congrats!
04/2021
Our project "PhotonUp4Cat" got selected for funding. Many thanks to the German Research Foundation.
We are looking forward to novel upconversion systems.
04/2021
Two new group members in one week. We welcome Alexandra for her research internship and our
transient absorption/emission setup (LP 980 with PMT and CCD camera) is finally ready to use.
02/2021
Sophie has been awarded a prestigious PhD fellowship from the Chemical Industry Funds. Congrats.
01/2021
Arne joined the group for his PhD. Great to have you on board!
11/2020
Till Zähringer joined the group for his Master thesis. Welcome Till!
Maria-Sophie relocated to Mainz and started as the 1st PhD student of the newly established Kerzig Group. Welcome Maria-Sophie, it's great to have you here!
Our high-power Kessil LEDs arrived in Mainz - let the photochemistry begin.