Check out our recent updates
The year 2025 marked an important chapter for HIPOLE Jena, characterized by scientific achievements, strong collaborations, and an active research community. In this video, members of HIPOLE Jena look back…
HIPOLE Jena Christmas Team Event 2025
On 10 December 2025, the HIPOLE Jena team gathered for a festive Christmas event at the beautiful Botanical Garden in Jena. Surrounded by a warm and cheerful atmosphere, colleagues enjoyed…
Driving Innovation in Solar Thermal Storage: ForMOST Meeting 2025 in Jena
The second progress meeting in 2025 of the DFG research group 5499 - ForMOST “Molecular Solar Energy Management - Chemistry of molecular solar thermal systems (MOST) Systems” was held in…
The central strategic goal of HIPOLE Jena is the accelerated, knowledge-based development of sustainable polymer materials for scalable energy technologies.
HIPOLE Jena is based on three research pillars:
- Material design & synthesis
- Scalability, prototypes, and transfer
- Characterization, theory & modeling and data science
This triad forms the basis for 5 areas of the HIPOLE Jena research mission:
Polymer redox-flow batteries
Redox-flow batteries (RFB) are a special battery technology. In contrast to many other battery systems, with RFB the performance and capacity can be scaled independently of each other. RFBs are particularly interesting for stationary energy storage. As part of HIPOLE Jena, organic, polymer-based electrolytes are being investigated, which makes the use of critical metals/metal ions in the electrolytes obsolete.
Polymer-based thin-film batteries
The large area of organic electronics opens up many new application possibilities, such as in the area of smart textiles or the “Internet of Things”. In this context, polymer-based active materials and electrolytes allow the printing production of flexible, tailor-made batteries. In HIPOLE Jena, the next generation of these materials is being investigated, which should, for example, enable a longer lifespan.
Photovoltaics
Commercial photovoltaic technologies have reached the terawatt (TW) range in terms of installed capacity worldwide. There will continue to be a very high demand for photovoltaic systems in the next few years, requiring scalable technologies to meet the ever-growing demand. HIPOLE Jena is dedicated to perovskite solar cells. The use of polymers is intended to improve stability, for example.
Functional self-healing materials
Functional self-healing materials represent a special field of research. These can restore their original properties after damage. For example, in battery electrodes, the conductivity should be restored after damage to the electrode. Comparable approaches should also be used for solar cells.
Sustainable chemistry
In the plastic age, which is also strongly associated with the negative environmental impacts of plastics (e.g. microplastics), sustainability plays an important role. Therefore, the polymers for the various applications should be created based on sustainable resources and their recycling should be possible. For example, the use of CO2 as a building block for polymers plays an important role.