Green Light for the Construction of the New CNC Building at the University of Würzburg

The funding of 8.750.000 € for the new CNC building, which will be located at the South Campus, was finally approved by the Bavarian Parliament in the last conference of the Committee on Budgets on December 5, 2013. The construction works will probably start in spring 2014 and approximately take up to 20 months.

Approximately 60 % of the total space which mounts up to 1.171 m² is planned for synthesis laboratories and physical measuring rooms. The remaining area will be used as office space.  The future users of the CNC, Professor Frank Würthner and Dr. Matthias Stolte, managed to plan the demands on the construction of the building in no less than 28 meetings with Würzburg’s building authorities (Staatliches Bauamt) and the architect’s offices “Grabow + Hoffmann (Nuremberg) and “Kuntz + Brück” (Würzburg).  According to Dr. Matthias Stolte the arrangement of highly equipped laboratories for chemical works as well as for highly sensitive physical measuring methods represented a major challenge. So, the new laboratories will be used for a diversity of synthetic works, as well as the application of sensitive scanning probe techniques and electron microscopy. Another focus lies on the fabrication and characterization of components for the organic electronic and photovoltaic as well as conducting fundamental research for the development of photo-catalysts for water splitting.

The new institute with Prof. Frank Würthner as head, as one of the five key labs of the interdisciplinary project “Solar Technologies Go Hybrid”, aims to create excellent job opportunities, especially for young researchers. In the medium term the key labs of “Solar Technologies Go Hybrid” in Würzburg, Erlangen-Nuremberg, Bayreuth and Munich (LMU & TU Munich) have committed themselves to exploring innovative concepts for converting solar energy into electricity and non-fossil fuels.