Debye Annual Lecture

Prof. dr. Mischa Bonn
Debye Annual Lecture speaker of 2024

Prof. Dr. Mischa Bonn joined the Max Planck Society in 2011 as one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, heading the division “Molecular Spectroscopy”. The Molecular Spectroscopy Department was founded in late 2011 at the MPI-P. It is a group of physicists, chemists, biologists, and engineers working to exploit intrinsic molecular motion to learn about the natural world. To this end, they use a combination of cutting-edge spectroscopies and microscopies to probe questions regarding physico-chemical coupling in systems relevant to biology and materials science. The three main research themes of the group are: water, biomolecules, and charge-carrier dynamics.

Prof. Bonn has won several prizes and awards for his work, including the Gold Medal from the Royal Dutch Chemical Society and the Van ’t Hoff Award from the Deutsche Bunsengesellschaft. His scientific interests focus on the development and application of laser-based (ultrafast) spectroscopies to advance our understanding of natural phenomena, specifically at interfaces – often involving Mischa’s favorite molecule: water.

Lecture title: Water and Graphene: a Quaint Quantum Couple.

Water interfaces differ from the bulk, in both their physical structure and chemical composition. A particularly fascinating interface is the water-graphene interface. Water has been reported to flow through carbon nanotubes (essentially curved graphene) with remarkably low resistance. Large-area graphene can serve as an electrochemical electrode, allowing detailed studies of electrochemical processes.
Surface-specific spectroscopy on water in contact with graphene enables elucidating electrochemistry at the molecular level [1,2], investigating the origin of the friction between water as it flows along graphene [3], and allows to unequivocally define at what thickness water is truly confined [4].

1. Y. Wang, T. Seki, X. Liu, X. Yu, C.-C. Yu, K.F. Domke, J. Hunger, M.T.M. Koper, Y. Chen, Y. Nagata, M. Bonn, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., DOI: 10.1002/anie.20221660 (2023)

2. Y. Wang, T. Seki, X. Yu, C.-C. Yu, K.-Y. Chiang, J. Hunger, Y. Chen, Y. Nagata, M. Bonn, Nature, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05669-y (2023)

3. X. Yu, A. Principi, K.-J. Tielrooij,  M. Bonn, N. Kavokine, Nature Nanotech., DOI: 10.1038/s41565-023-01421-3 (2023)

4. Y. Wang, F. Tang, X. Yu, K.-Y. Chiang, C.-C. Yu, T. Ohto, Y. Chen, Y. Nagata, M. Bonn, DOI: arxiv.org/abs/2310.10354v2

Previous Annual Lecture speakers:

• 2024: Prof. Dr. M. Bonn (director department of Molecular Spectroscopy, Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz): Water and Graphene: a Quaint Quantum Couple.

• 2023: Prof. Dr. Philipp Adelhelm Na-Ion Batteries: Energy Storage Based on Abundant Elements

• 2022: Prof. Hans-Jurgen Butt (Experimental Physics of Interfaces group at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research): Electrostatic charging: the source of the missing force on moving drops

• 2021: No Debye Annual Lecture due to the Covid-19 pandemic

• 2020: No Debye Annual Lecture due to the Covid-19 pandemic
• 2019: The Debye Institute celebrated its 30th anniversary with a scientific symposium. 
• 2018: Prof. Monika Ritsch-Marte (Department for Physiology and Medical Physics, Innsbruck Medical University): Synthetic Holography Trapping and Imaging: The Importance of Shaping Your Wavefront
• 2017: Prof. Ben L. Feringa (Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, Center for Systems Chemistry & Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, the Netherlands, Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2016): The art of building small
• 2016: Prof. Luis M. Liz-Marzán (Center for Cooperative Research in Biomaterials, CIC biomaGUNE, Spain): Composite plasmonic nanomaterials for biosensing and catalysis
• 2015: Prof. Ulrike Diebold (Institute of Applied Physics, Vienna University of Technology, Austria): Surface science studies of an iron oxide model catalyst
• 2014 Jubilee Lecture: Prof. Hans-Joachim Freund (Department of Chemical Physics, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Germany): Models for heterogeneous catalysts: complex materials at the atomic level
• 2014 Jubilee Lecture: Prof. Jan Vermant (Department of Materials, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zürich, Switzerland / KU Leuven): Colloids at interfaces: how the rules of the game change…
• 2014 Jubilee Lecture: Prof. Romain Quidant (Institute of Photonic Sciences, Spain): Shining a (bright) light on the very small
• 2013: Prof. Martien A. Cohen Stuart (Physical Chemistry and Soft Matter Chair Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands): Biomimetic materials: from modelatine to viromimic
• 2012: Prof. Ib Chorkendorff (Danish National Research Foundation Center for Individual Nanoparticle Functionality, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark): Heterogeneous catalysis: a part of the solution for future energy conversion