Solid-State and Materials Chemistry, Max Planck 

Innovative materials that can be used for sustainable energy sources – this is the area being investigated by the chemist Bettina Valeska Lotsch. With a focus on fundamentally oriented materials synthesis, she has done groundbreaking work in developing a new generation of photocatalysts that make it possible to generate hydrogen and reduce CO₂ after exposure to light. By studying the interaction of light with specially produced materials, she has also developed an entirely new light storage concept that allows the conversion and storage of solar energy in a single material. This enables delayed photocatalysis in the dark – for which Bettina Valeska Lotsch has coined the term “dark photocatalysis”. These findings are vital to the development of efficient solar batteries, for example. Lotsch’s work on the development of inorganic electrocatalysts based on two-dimensional materials for water splitting has also attracted a great deal of attention. 

After obtaining her degree and doctorate at LMU Munich, Bettina Valeska Lotsch went to the University of Toronto, Canada, for two years as a postdoc in 2007, funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Back in Germany, she was appointed tenure-track professor at LMU Munich, and from 2011 onwards, she was also an independent group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart. Since 2017, she has been the director of the Department of Nanochemistry there, while also an honorary professor at LMU Munich and the University of Stuttgart. Lotsch received an ERC Starting Grant in 2014. She has previously received numerous awards for her outstanding work, including the European Materials Research Society’s EU-40 Materials Prize in 2017. In 2021, she was inducted into the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

GEPRIS

In our information system GEPRIS you will find an overview of current and completed projects of Professor Dr. Bettina Valeska Lotsch.

Further Information

• Research Funding > Prizes > Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize
• List of all prizewinners