Research at the IPC
As part of the Faculty of Chemistry, our long-established house looks back on 120 years of excellent research in the field of Physical Chemistry. Here we would like to present a short overview over our current research interests.The work group "Physical Chemistry I" of Prof. Dr. Alec Wodtke deals with molecular interactions at interfaces. Among other techniques, scattering experiments of molecular beams at surfaces play an essential role.
Prof. Dr. Martin Suhm and his work group "Physical Chemistry II" are concerned mainly with intermolecular forces. Supersonic jet expansion produces clusters of small molecules, and infrared and Raman spectrometers are used to measure molecular vibrations.
The work group "Physical Chemistry of Solids" is led by Prof. Dr. Götz Eckold. This group's work focuses on non-equilibrium states in condensed matter, kinetics of decomposition processes and the development of instruments for neutron scattering.
"Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry" is the field of Prof. Dr. Michael Buback and his team. Here, kinetics, mechanics and selectivity of chemical processes, mainly from the area of polymer chemistry, are studied over wide ranges of temperature and pressure.
The work group "Macromolecular Chemistry" of Prof. Dr. Philipp Vana is involved in the synthesis and characterization of tailor-made macromolecules. Main topics are the development of biomimetic polymers, complex macromolecular architectures, polymerization at surfaces and nano composites.
Prof. Dr. Andreas Janshoff leads the work group "Biophysical Chemistry", working at the intersection of Physical Chemistry, Biochemistry and Biophysics. Research is focused on the mechanical, electrical and optical properties of small systems, varying in size between single molecules and living cells.
The "Lower Saxony Professorship Physical Chemistry" is held by Prof. Dr. Jürgen Troe. His group deals with reaction kinetics, spectroscopy, photo and laser chemistry, atmospheric chemistry and combustion chemistry.
The research group "Computational Chemistry and Biochemistry" of Prof. Dr. Ricardo Mata works on quantum chemical studies of biochemical systems. Another core area is the adoption of many-body approximations in correlation methods as a means to reduce computational cost.
The theoretical investigation of chemical reactions at solid surfaces, properties of materials, solvation as well as the development of new methods to represent potential-energy surfaces using artificial Neural Networks are research topics of Prof. Dr. Jörg Behler and his
The junior research group "Polymer Kinetics" of Dr. Florian Ehlers investigates the kinetics of polymerisation reactions. Pulsed Laser light is used to cleave photo initiators into radicals which are subsequently analysed using electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy.