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Season’s Greetings from the Kühnel Lab 🎄✨

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To wrap up the year, the Kühnel Lab came together for a Christmas potluck dinner. The group did an amazing job decorating our lovely grey seminar room with a colourful mix of of chemistry and Xmas themes. The weather was a little too sunny for Xmas, but the decorations and the food more than made up for it.

We were also really happy to be joined by some of our group alumni for a catch-up over a glass of mulled wine. Thanks to everyone for a great evening and a hugely successful year for the group!

The Kühnel Lab wishes you a merry and peaceful holiday season and a Happy New Year 2026!

Back row: Taylor, Astha, Zegha, Claudia, Marija, Joao, Mike, Fiona, Diana, Franziska, Léonard, Moritz
Front row: Zaid, Nils

Paper in ACS Sustainable Resource Management

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Astha’s article about a waste-derived photocatalyst for hydrogen evolution was published in ACS Sustainable Resource Management (read her paper here) and is featuerd on the supplementary cover. This paper demonstrates how a nanocomposite from waste coffee grounds (an abundant resource in the Kühnel Lab) and an anthraquinone-base covalent organic framework acts as an active catalyst for solar-driven hydrogen evolution from pure water. This COFfee catalyst forms a Z-scheme type heterojunction with improved charge separation and much improved performance compared to the pure COF that requires 75% less photocatalyst to produce the same amount of hydrogen.

Paper in J Mater Chem A

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Léonard’s article about an artificial metalloenzyme for hydrogen evolution was published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A (read his paper here). This paper led by our collaborators Christine Cavazza and Alan Le Goff in Grenoble demonstrates the site-specific attachment of a Rubredoxin protein to a carbon nanotube electrode via diazonium coupling of a thiophenolate. After substituting the Rubredoxin Fe for Ni, the resulting surface-bound artificial metalloenzyme acts as an efficient H2-evolving electrocatalyst with up to 4 mA cm-2 at 800 mV overpotential.

Lab reshuffle

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After undertaking his BSc project and working as a research intern, Zaid Wonde leaves the Kühnel Lab after 18 months to continue his studies in microbiology. Nils Weimper leaves the lab after 6 months as a research intern to undertake his MSc project with Fabian Commichau. We will miss you guys!

Taylor Frost starts her interdisciplinary MSc project on photoreforming in collaboration with Sven Marhan in Soil Biology. Ellen Lambur starts as lab technician. Welcome to the Lab!

Atekelte Kassa leaves the lab to undertake a PhD in physics at the University of York.

Paper in Trends in Chemistry

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Léonard’s article about the mechanistic details of semiconductor–enzyme hybrid photosystems was published in Trends in Chemistry (read his paper here). The paper highlights exciting work from the Dukovic group at Boulder that examines the various competing electron transfer pathways in biophotocatalysts that are unobservable by direct means. Using kinetic modelling, the work shows how often overlooked pathways such as back electron transfer and reverse reactions are key for achieving a high activity (read original paper here).

Kühnel Lab at IMBG 2025

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The Kühnel Lab visited Grenoble for the 9th International Conference of the Institute of Metals in Biology Grenoble (IMBG) 2025!

This year’s topic of Fuel Synthesis through Photo- and Electrocatalysis attracted a number of great speakers and posters. We also had the chance to present both a talk and a poster on CO2 reduction and photoreforming.

Léonard presented his PhD project on improving the O2-tolerance of electro- and photocatalytic CO2-to-CO conversion by carbon monoxide dehydrogenase (CODH) enzymes through the operation in tailored deep eutectic solvents. During his talk, he showcased promising CO2 reduction data of CODH immobilized on carbon nanotube-based electrodes as well as on functionalized graphitic carbon nitride, increasing their stability towards O2 through solvent tuning.

Zaid presented his poster on the application of different graphitic carbon nitride-based photocatalysts for cheap and green generation of H2 from biowaste. He aims to improve the solar-driven production of H2 coupled with the photocatalytic oxidation of cellulose through the use of engineered carbon nitride and tailored solvents.

It was great to meet and discuss with the lovely people there, enjoying the conference as well as the collective exploration of local pubs in Grenoble 🙂

Happy Holidays

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Season’s Greetings from the Kühnel Lab 🎄✨

Last week, we visited the Stuttgart Christmas Market and had a fantastic time exploring the festive atmosphere together. The market was as enchanting as ever and a perfect place to wrap up the year.

For our institute’s get-together this week, we prepared something truly special – a ChemisTree! The Kühnel Lab members came up with the idea of this unique Chemistry Christmas Tree to foster teamwork. This innovative Christmas tree is inspired by chemistry and includes parts that chemists typically use in the laboratory to conduct experiments.

The ChemisTree was assembled from retort stands and clamps to create the framework. It was then decorated with a ball-and-stick model and round-bottom flasks. Finally, to make it really Christmassy, we filled the flasks with colourful solutions of non-toxic compounds.

And it was so much fun building the tree together! 😎

We hope you like our ChemisTree as much as we do, and we wish you all a merry and peaceful holiday season!

Best wishes, The Kühnel Lab🎅🤶🏽🎁🍀