New Perspectives in Science Education

The modification of surfaces for a specific change of material properties is a field of intense research, whereby the type of property change can be very diverse. Prominent examples are compact oxide layers that increase the corrosion resistance or generate colourful surfaces by interference effects. Additionally, porous surface layers enable the utilization of semiconductor or intercalation properties of the materials through major surface enlargement in order to make them applicable for solar cells or battery technologies. We developed a science camp held at the XLAB – Göttingen Experimental Laboratory for Young People providing school students with an experimental insight into this topic and the opportunity to explore the fascinating field of functional surfaces. The camp includes for example the functionalization of titanium through anodic oxidation, characterization by SEM at university facilities and experiments on novel battery technologies. Additionally, solar cell using titanium dioxide as semiconducting material are built and compared to silicon-based cells and novel perovskite solar cells developed by a collaborative research center at University of Göttingen (CRC 1073). We describe the concept of the camp and present an evaluation focusing on the learning progress of the participants on selected topics like semiconductor effects, mechanisms of oxide growth during anodic oxidation of titanium and the working principles of lithium or sodium-ion batteries.

Keywords: surfaces, nano structures, functionalization, science camp

References:

[1] Lanfermann, P., Weidmann, C., Waitz, S., Maaß, M. C. & Waitz, T. (2022). Herstellung von Nano-Titandioxidschichten mittels anodischer Oxidation: Schön bunt und funktional. CHEMKON, 29(8), 225-233.

[2] Lanfermann, P., Weidmann, C., Waitz, S., Maaß, M. C., Schönberger, T. & Waitz, T. (2022). Electrochemical Surface Modification of Titanium in Chemistry Class. New Perspectives in Science Education 11th Edition.