Date added: 2026-05-11
The 44th Seminar of Advanced Materials Center
We warmly invite you to the 44th seminar of the Advanced Materials Center, which will take place on May 20th, 2026 (Wednesday) at 1:15 p.m. in NE 309 (building 42, WETI B).
Prof. Adam Slabon, Chair of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Wuppertal, Germany, will present a talk entitled "Functional Materials Discovery for Future Green Technologies".
Adam Slabon was born on November 24th 1983 in Zabrze, Poland, and grew up mostly in Nuremberg, Germany. After High-School, he studied chemistry at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, with research stays at the Nanyang Technological University Singapore, and Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne. In 2010, he moved to ETH Zurich for PhD studies at the Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Reinhard Nesper. Subsequently, he moved for postdoctoral studies with Prof. Peidong Yang at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2013. Slabon established his research group in 2014 at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, RWTH Aachen University, Germany, where he obtained his habilitation in 2019 (mentor: Prof. Richard Dronskowski). In the same year, he was appointed Assistant Professor (tenure-track) in Inorganic Chemistry at the Department of Materials and Environmental Chemistry (MMK), Stockholm University, Sweden, where he was awarded the prestigious Wallenberg Academy Fellow. In 2022, he accepted the offer to take the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry as Full Professor at the University of Wuppertal in Germany. His research interests include inorganic materials, catalysis and Green Chemistry.
After the seminar, we traditionally invite you for pizza!
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Abstract:
The chemical industry is in transition from established fossil-based processes toward environment-neutral technologies that minimize the dependence on geopolitical risks. This transition is inevitable connected to the choice of chemical feedstocks and complete product life-cycles. Within this respect, materials provide the opportunity to address these challenges at the molecular level by discovery of efficient catalysts, and electro- and photochemically active materials. In this talk, I will discuss on selected examples the challenges and opportunities of inorganic materials for green technologies. This includes solar-driven electrochemical biomass valorization, CO2 reduction, photocatalyzed generation of hydrogen peroxide, and batteries recycling. I will also highlight the role of materials interfaces and the synthetic strategies to tune materials functionality.