News – Self-Assembled Materials

We teamed up with the renowned magazine GEO to co-author an article on structural colors in animals. The piece, published on GEO.de, explores the fascinating mechanisms behind the vibrant and shimmering colors found in nature. Unlike pigment-based colors, structural colors arise from microscopic surface structures that manipulate light through reflection and interference. This phenomenon creates the brilliant, iridescent hues seen in butterfly wings, peacock feathers, and beetle shells. Niki contributed scientific insights to the article, explaining how nanostructures interact with light to produce these striking effects. The article also features… Read More »Our research on GEO Magazine

Congratulations to our mini project students on this great achievement! On January 22nd they were awarded the best poster prizes for presenting the research carried out in our lab to peers and faculty members. Pranjal was also awarded the best student prize for his academic achievement as well as for his dedication to helping his colleagues.

Curious to know more about supraparticles? On YouTube you can find a presentation from Niki on the latest developments of his research. This talk is part of the session “Particles empowering tomorrow: Innovations for our global world” at ParTec 2025.

We are excited to share that our PhD student, Natalie Bonakdar, has won the Second Poster Prize at the Particle-based Materials Symposium in Bremen on September 24, 2024 for her poster “Optimizing Wetting Properties of Silica Inverse Opal Structures by Controlling Templating Nanoparticle Properties”. We are excited to see how her research progresses and look forward to her future results. Congratulations to Natalie on this well-deserved achievement!

Niki ranked respectively first and second with his lectures Basics in Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology 1 – Mechanical and Optical Properties and Grenzflächen in der Biotechnologie in the winter semester 23/24 and in the summer semester 24. We are very happy to see that our lectures are very well received by students!

Johannes won the best presentation award at the “Particles at Liquid Interfaces” conference. Hooray and congratulations, Johannes!

Carina’s and Gudrun’s recent article has been featured on the cover of Advanced Materials Interfaces! In this paper, we demonstrate how to enhance optical effects by integrating Polydopamine (PDA), a synthetic melanin, into photonic crystals. PDA is incorporated in two ways: by gradually increasing PDA shells in core-shell particles while maintaining a constant total diameter to create homogeneous crystals, and by co-assembling varying ratios of polystyrene (PS) and absorbing PS@PDA particles for heterogeneous crystals. Chromaticity analysis in the L*a*b* color sphere reveals structures with optimal color saturation. Simulations suggest that… Read More »Carina’s and Gudrun’s recent article has been featured on the cover of Advanced Materials Interfaces!

On April 15th Niki, assisted by early-career researcher Rebekka, presented how structural color works at the science slam »Um uns die Nature« jointly organized by the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung and the Frankfurter Museums-Gesellschaft e.V. at the Opera house in Frankfurt and was awarded the second Prize for his presentation!

Our Bachelor Student Sonja Schaller was awarded the first prize for her poster “Determining the Organization of Binary Colloidal Supraparticles by matters of Diffusiophoresis and Channel Formation” at the Spray Drying Symposium taking place in Würzburg on 09.04.2024. We are very proud of her achievement and looking forward to her successful thesis research outcome!

The German Research Foundation just announced that CRC1411 will receive funding until 2028 with Niki as a spokesperson. The long-term vision of CRC1411 is to develop particle systems with controlled size, shape and composition. The innovative approach in CRC1411 is is that these materials are first developed and optimized for specific product properties in computer models. In the second step, the computer then predicts optimal synthesis conditions that lead to particles with these desired properties. This approach reverses typical manufacturing processes and promises fast and resource-efficient access to functional particle-based… Read More »Collaborative Research Center CRC 1411 will be funded for another 4 years

Niki’s lecture “Grenzflächen in der Verfahrenstechnik” was again on the podium as one of the best rated lectures in the whole Technical Faculty! In this class Niki discusses interfaces in materials and process technologies, with plenty of examples from nature and technology. Read more about the class here.

Jonathan won the 1st prize for his poster on entropic trapping in spherical colloidal clusters at the PBM23. Great start to his PhD!

Two CRC1411-related lectures taught by Prof. Nicolas Vogel were included in the “Bestenlisten”, with “Polymer Materials” ranking 2nd, and “Grenzflächen in der Biotechnologie” ranking 3rd in the whole TeckFac. These awards show how the results of the CRC1411 and LFG research contribute to the success of our teaching.

Another successful PhD defense in the Vogel group! On April 20, 2023 Teresa brilliantly defended her PhD work on sustainable self-cleaning repellent coatings for environmental and consumer protection.

Check out our newest paper by Katharina and Teresa about sustainable superhydrophobic and slippery coatings using a water-based system and renewable sources. Natural drying oils were implemented as binding material and natural non-drying oils as lubricants to minimize the environmental impact.

Catalysts are of utmost relevance for the production of chemicals and energy storage with hydrogen. Researchers at the Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg for Renewable Energy (HI ERN) and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) have now discovered that the formation of bubbles in the pores of a catalyst can be essential for its activity. Their findings help to optimize catalyst materials for reactions in which gases are formed from liquids – and which play a central role in a future green hydrogen economy. Read more

Check out the new podcast-episode of “morgen beginnt heute” – Teresa explains how we are using models from nature to prepare our self-cleaning coatings!

On July 5th Salvatore successfully defended his PhD thesis!

Have you ever spilled your cup of coffee? You may have noticed how the coffee dries into an intriguing stain with a bright centre and a dark ring encircling it. This “coffee ring” forms because the liquid evaporates faster at the edges, inducing a flow from the droplet interior towards the outside. Suspended solid coffee particles thus accumulate at the drop edge, causing the characteristic ring pattern. In Nature Communications, we present a simple, yet versatile strategy to overcome the omnipresent coffee ring effect and achieve homogeneous drying patterns of… Read More »Marcel nat comm

Bionic innovation towards environmental protection – The successful end of our joined project BayBionik with the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection was celebrated at a final event at the Bionicum in the Tiergarten Nürnberg. We presented our work on self-cleaning and sustainable surface coatings to the public and Staatsminister Thorsten Glauber. You can read the full article here.

Self-assembled Materials-Vogel Lab

Self-assembled Materials-Vogel Lab