Paintable Battery

If the components of a battery, including electrodes, separator, electrolyte and the current collectors can be designed as paints and applied sequentially to build a complete battery, on any arbitrary surface, it would have significant impact on the design, implementation and integration of energy storage devices. Here, we establish a paradigm change in battery assembly by fabricating rechargeable Li-ion batteries solely by multi-step spray painting of its components on a variety of materials such as metals, glass, glazed ceramics and flexible polymer substrates. We also demonstrate the possibility of interconnected modular spray painted battery units to be coupled to energy conversion devices such as solar cells, with possibilities of building standalone energy capture-storage hybrid devices in different configurations

2D bimolecular self-assembled porphyrin-fullerene nanostructures

The formation of self-assembled monolayers of porphyrin molecules and their usefulness as surface supported templates for hosting fullerene molecules has been investigated by means of a room temperature Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM). In particular, examples of unprecedented addressable supramolecular architectures composed of fullerenes and porphyrins were obtained. Furthermore, the first 2-dimemensional porphyrin based supramolecular host network with porous structure has been self-assembled on a solid surface. This network features a specific chemical sensitivity for different fullerene guest molecules. Various porphyrin derivatives were deposited onto diverse metal substrates. While some combinations did not result in ordered monolayers, many others revealed to form self-assembled structures. Two varieties of porphyrin molecules were examined. On the one hand, single porphyrin cores featuring different functional side-groups were investigated. On the other hand, unique triply-fused diporphyrin cores, also featuring relevant functional groups, have been researched. In addition to several close-packed monolayers, a nanoporous assembly of porphyrin molecules was discovered. This porous network features cavities with a pore-size approximately identical to the size of C60 fullerenes and a pore-pore distance of 3.3 nm. Fullerene molecules were adsorbed onto preformed porphyrin assemblies. Several of these monolayers exhibit interesting fullerene hosting capabilities. The fullerenes have been found to form lines, pairs or adsorb into the pores depending on the underlying porphyrin structure. In particular, the adsorption and dynamics of C60 and C70 fullerenes hosted in the self-assembled nanoporous network on the Ag(111) surface have been studied. Time-resolved STM studies of these supramolecular systems have revealed host-guest interactions resulting in a distinctly dissimilar mobility of the two fullerenes within the porous porphyrin network. Long-range coverage-dependent interactions have been discovered to influence the hopping rates of the adsorbed fullerene guests. These are likely mediated by a complex mechanism involving both the Ag substrate and the flexible porphyrin host network. At increased fullerene coverage this unprecedented interplay results in the formation of large fullerene chains and islands. By applying a lattice gas model with nearest-neighbor interactions and by evaluating the fullerene pair distribution functions the respective coveragedependent guest-guest interaction energies have been estimated

Gamification im Software Engineering – Motivation und Lernunterstützung für Studierende

Gamification wird in vielen Bereichen, die auch den Bildungssektor einschließen, zur Motivations- und Leistungssteigerung eingesetzt. Dieser Beitrag beschreibt das Design, die Umsetzung und Evaluierung eines Gamification-Konzeptes für die Vorlesung „Software Engineering" an der Hochschule Offenburg. Gamification soll nach Intention der Lehrenden eine kontinuierliche und tiefergehende Auseinandersetzung mit den Themen der Vorlesung forcieren sowie einen positiven Einfluss auf die Motivation der Studierenden haben, um den Lernprozess zu unterstützen. Zentral für das Gamification-Design sind dabei eine freiwillige Teilnahme, die Wahrnehmung der Bedeutung der Lerninhalte und ein zielorientierter Einsatz von Gamification-Elementen. Das entwickelte Konzept wurde in der Lernplattform Moodle realisiert, über drei Semester eingesetzt und parallel evaluiert. Die Ergebnisse dieser Evaluierungen zeigen, dass die Studierenden den gamifizierten Kurs intensiv und oft über das gesamte Semester nutzten und aus eigenem Antrieb eine Vielzahl von Übungen absolvierten

Supramolecular nanostructuring of silver surfaces via self-assembly of [60]fullerene and porphyrin modules

Recent achievements in our laboratory toward the "bottom-up" fabrication of addressable multicomponent molecular entities obtained by self-assembly of C-60 and porphyrins on Ag(100) and Ag(111) surfaces are described.. Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) studies on ad-layers constituting monomeric and triply linked porphyrin modules showed that the molecule:, self-organize into ordered supramolecular assemblies, the ordering of which is controlled by the porphyrin chemical structure, the metal substrate, and the surface coverage. Specifically, the successful preparation of unprecedented two-dimensional porphyrin-based assemblies featuring regular pores on Ag(111) surfaces has been achieved. Subsequent co-deposition of C-60 molecules on top of the porphyrin monolayers results in selective self-organization into ordered molecular hybrid bilayers, the organization of which is driven by both fullerene coverage and porphyrin structure. In all-ordered fullerene-porphyrin assemblies, the C-60 guests organize, unusually, into long chains and/or two-dimensional arrays. Furthermore, sublimation of C-60 on top of the porous porphyrin network reveals the selective long-range inclusion of the fullerene guests within the hosting cavities. The observed mode of the C-60 self-assembly originates from a delicate equilibrium between substrate-molecule and molecule-molecule interactions involving charge-transfer processes and conformational reorganizations as a consequence of the structural adaptation, of the fullerene-porphyrin bilayer