-
Research
Southern knowledge
Research
Southern knowledge
Symbol for new citizens: with the construction of the Huguenot Church (1686–1736), Margrave Christian Ernst wanted to show the protestants who had fled France that they were permanently welcome in Erlangen.
show
Forschungszentrum Jülich’s campus is 2.2 square kilometres in size. However, Jülich scientists are active beyond the campus – for example at the Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg.Why there?
The chemist Florian Speck works at the Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg for Renewable Energy (HI ERN), which was founded in 2013 as a branch of Forschungszentrum Jülich.
Image above: Symbol for new citizens: with the construction of the Huguenot Church (1686–1736), Margrave Christian Ernst wanted to show the protestants who had fled France that they were permanently welcome in Erlangen.
Why is Erlangen a good research location for you?
A lot of competence centring around our focus, hydrogen research, is concentrated here. We cooperate with the university, with Siemens and with the Bavarian Centre for Applied Energy Research, for example.
What are you researching specifically?
We focus on fuel cells. They make it possible to drive vehicles with hydrogen instead of petrol. An important component of fuel cells is the catalyst. It presently contains platinum, which we intend to replace with less expensive metals to the largest possible extent.
How do you do that?
Prof. Karl Mayrhofer, Director at HI ERN, has developed a unique method with which we can characterise the corrosion behaviour of different catalysts accurately and quickly. This improves our basic understanding of long-life catalysts.
Florian Speck 
scientists are currently working at the Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg for Renewable Energy
Local geography
City cycling …
is a Climate-Alliance campaign. The city of Erlangen, in which the cycle traffic volume is higher than anywhere else in Bavaria, took part again in 2018. There were 16 HI ERN employees who covered as many kilometres as possible by bike instead of taking the car for three weeks – thus saving 685 kg of CO2.
The “Bergkirchweih” …
has taken place since 1755 and is thus the oldest funfair in Germany. The “5th season” in Erlangen always begins on the Thursday before Whitsun and lasts twelve days.
Religious refugees …
from France – the Huguenots – prompted Margrave Christian Ernst von Brandenburg-Bayreuth to build a new, baroque “ideal city” next to the old Erlangen with wide, straight streets and many squares in the 17th century. Later, the two parts of the city grew together.
Images: Forschungszentrum Jülich, Sopotnicki/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM