DGO Young Investigator Award goes to Dr. Mario Kurniawan

Dr. Mario Kurniawan receives the award for his dissertation on "Preparation and characterization of cuprous oxide for improved photoelectrochemical performance". The DGO Young Scientists Award is presented to graduates with an outstanding thesis in the field of surface technology. The DGO would like to encourage young technicians and scientists to work in the field of surface engineering. This year's prize goes in equal parts to two young scientists who addressed issues of energy generation and resource efficiency in their dissertations. Both topics are of great topicality. Electroplating processes lead to interesting results, which open up new fields of application within electroplating.

In his dissertation, Dr. Kurniawan dealt with an electrochemical production route for Cu2O on porous copper. In an innovative approach, he uses hydrogen bubbles formed in an acidic electrolyte at high current densities to produce porous copper layers, into which he subsequently deposits copper oxide from an alkaline electrolyte. The resulting layers with a large surface area have a high potential for application in photolytic water decomposition.

Mario Kurniawan obtained his bachelor's degree at the "Swiss German University" in Indonesia, his master's degree at the "University of Tokyo" in Japan and his doctoral degree at the Electrochemistry and Electroplating Group at TU Ilmenau under the supervision of Prof. Andreas Bund. Currently, Dr. Kurniawan is a postdoctoral researcher at the Group.