Demonstration of Feeding Vehicle-Integrated Photovoltaic-Converted Energy into the High-Voltage On-Board Network of Practical Light Commercial Vehicles for Range Extension

The setting up of a practical electrically driven light commercial demonstration vehicle with integrated photovoltaics (PV) is reported. The demonstrator vehicle is equipped with 15 modules based on the crystalline Si/amorphous Si heterojunction technology. The nominal total peak power under standard testing conditions is 2180 Wp. Specifically, the PV-converted energy is fed into the high-voltage (HV; 400 V) board-net for a utilization of the large capacity of the HV battery and thus for direct range extension. The demonstrator vehicle is equipped with irradiation, wind, temperature, magnetic, and global positioning system sensors. Irradiation and temperature as well as the energy flows from modules, maximum power point trackers (MPPTs), low-voltage buffer battery to HV battery via DC/DC, and from the HV battery to the loads during an exemplarily test drive day (May 31, 2021) are monitored. The range extension obtained at this day on our test route (51° 59′ N, 9° 31′ E) was 36 km, the corresponding CO2 savings account for ≈2.3 kg. The chain efficiency of the electronic components from the input side of the MPPTs to the HV output side of the DC/DC was 68.6%, whereas the DC/DC itself has an average efficiency of 90%. © 2021 The Authors. Solar RRL published by Wiley-VCH Gmb

Sequence-selective detection of double-stranded DNA sequences using pyrrole-imidazole polyamide microarrays

We describe a microarray format that can detect double-stranded DNA sequences with a high degree of sequence selectivity. Cyclooctyne-derivatized pyrrole-imidazole polyamides were immobilized on azide-modified glass substrates using microcontact printing and a strain-promoted azide-alkyne cycloaddition (SPAAC) reaction. These polyamide-immobilized substrates selectively detected a seven-base-pair binding site incorporated within a double-stranded oligodeoxyribonucleotide sequence even in the presence of an excess of a sequence with a single-base-pair mismatc

Technology assessment in the STEM curriculum: Teaching responsible research and innovation skills to future innovators

This article describes and evaluates a novel approach to incorporating technology assessment (TA), responsible research and innovation as well as science and technology ethics into STEM curricula (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) by the example of the online course ‘Good Chemistry – Methodological, Ethical, and Social Dimensions.’ Based on the evaluation of extensive student feedback, this article answers positively to three major reservations (Is it possible? Is it necessary? Does it make a difference?) that often preclude such contents from STEM curricula: first, understanding the normative dimensions of chemists’ professional agency is a skill, like many others, that requires adequate teaching and training; second, engaging with TA issues not only teaches discourse and critical thinking skills, but increases students’ professional competences to collaborate in highly interdisciplinary settings; third, though this is less evidential and needs to proof in the future, it may enhance chemists’ responsibility as drivers of innovation.Dieser Bericht beschreibt und bewertet einen neuartigen Lehransatz für Wissenschafts- und Technikethik für Studierende der MINT-Fächer (Mathematik, Informatik, Naturwissenschaft, Technik) am Beispiel des Onlinekurses 'Good Chemistry - Methodological, Ethical, and Social Dimensions'. Auf Basis eines umfangreichen Feedbacks der Kursteilnehmer*innen reagiert der Aufsatz auf drei wesentliche Vorbe-halte (Ist es möglich? Ist es notwendig? Ändert es etwas?), die oft gegen die Integration solcher Inhalte in MINT-Fächern angeführt werden: Erstens ist das Verständnis normativer Dimensionen des beruflichen Handelns von Chemiker*innen eine Kompetenz, die, wie viele andere, in an-gemessener Weise vermittelt und trainiert werden muss; zweitens schult die Auseinandersetzung mit TA-Inhalten nicht nur Diskurskompetenz und kritisches Denken, sondern verbessert auch die Fähigkeit der Studierenden zur interdisziplinären Kooperation; drittens, wobei sich dies in der Zukunft noch erweisen muss, kann ein Kurs wie dieser dazu beitragen, Chemiker*innen als treibende Kräfte von Innovation auf verantwortliches Handeln vorzubereiten

Ethics, Chemistry, and Education for Sustainability

Have not the experts and their research contributed all these innovations, their translation into services and goods by the respective industries, in chemistry and in other fields of science and technology? Coping with limitations in crucial resources has always been an important driving force for the growth in chemical knowledge and the achievements of the chemical industry: Habers and Boschs research on the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen in the form of ammonia was triggered by the shortage of natural nitrate, the Chilean salitre. Similar limitations led to coal liquefaction by Fischer and Tropsch. And a third example is the development of synthetic rubber in the 1930s which eased the dependence of industry on natural rubber from tropical countries—which at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century had brought great profits to the traders, but also great suffering to the people of the countries of origin, for example, the Congo. Today it is not much different. With challenges such as the peaking of the major feedstock of chemical industry, that is, crude oil, and its spiraling price as an energy source, research for more efficient photovoltaic materials is increasingly important. But what is meant by “sustainability”? Simply carrying on? A connotation of a “better world” resonates in this word; and certainly the development meant is not what resulted from the chemical-industrial progress in the first half of the twentieth century with its two world wars, the blasting away of millions of people possible by Habers inventions, and the ability to transform coal into the fuel for the war machine, for instance at Auschwitz, where the great poet-chemist Primo Levi suffered as an enslaved laborer-scientist