Molecular chemistry impacts on a wide range of transformational activities that the society relies on and thus plays a key role in addressing the societal challenges facing the European Union in the 21st century. Current synthetic methods commonly depend on rare and costly precious metals or face obstacles stemming from mismatching molecular orbitals, which necessitates atom-inefficient synthetic pathways. Hence, research on the utilisation of abundant and environmentally benign elements in synthesis and catalysis and the exploration of alternative activation and functionalisation strategies is urgently required. AGILE addresses these challenges by establishing new methods for breaking and making chemical bonds and for redox-catalysis with a single system, i.e. homo- and heterobimetallic bis(carbene) analogues of aluminium and gallium, which will be utilised as the next generation of selective reagents, high performing catalysts, and valuable ligands. AGILE will develop novel, reactive compounds that combine the benefits of derivatives in highly reactive oxidation states with the cooperativity of dinuclear Al and Ga complexes that are cheap, environmentally benign, and non-toxic. Equipped with unique frontier molecular orbitals, they will provide the reversible reactivity crucially required to unlock a wide range of elemental steps. By merging two one-electron processes, AGILE will overcome the limitations of monometallic two-electron reactions, thereby enabling redox-catalysis by main-group bimetallics. Finally, AGILE will use prototypical Lewis-acids as very strong electron donors to promote redox-catalysis with abundant first-row transition metals. In-depth kinetic, spectroscopic, and computational insight will help us achieve these challenging objectives. By providing new catalysts and expanding the scope of challenging chemical transformations, AGILE will significantly contribute to the development of main-group chemistry and more sustainable synthetic methods.

The lack of an on-chip power source providing uninterrupted energy impedes the progress of smart dust in moving from lab-level demonstrations to everyday applications. Tiny generators relying on external energy sources face spatial and temporal limitations. Batteries with adequate energy are not available in an area of less than 1 mm2, and the reasons for their absence are manifold. Mainstream battery architectures require either thick or tall electrodes created by etching into the wafer, but it is very fiddly to deposit materials onto these electrodes without defects. High-capacity materials such as lithium cobalt oxide, sulfur and lithium metal are often excluded because on-chip techniques to synthesize or stabilize such materials are missing. Moreover, a low-power monitor to provide precise information about the energy storage state and battery health is essential for real applications but unexplored so far. These difficulties demand a paradigm shift in microbattery development to pursue novel approaches that offer energy-dense microbatteries integrable into microsystems. Therefore, we propose a micro-origami technology for on-chip microbatteries using aqueous zinc battery chemistry, together with embedded surveillance based on a non-volatile redox transistor with near-zero power consumption. SMADBINS is expected to bring advances in battery chemistry and materials and on-chip energy production and management, boosting research for microbattery and smart dust applications, as was recently highlighted by the PI [Nature, 2021, 589, 195]. The PI has decisively contributed to the field of aqueous microbatteries and developed the smart dust battery concept together with his team in several publications. However, a smart dust battery has not been achieved yet. Therefore, the main objective of this project is to develop the first smart dust battery embedded with a low-power monitor, which attains a footprint capacity of more than 10 mAh/cm2 within 1 mm2.

ACTIONS proposes a material-based concept to drastically reduce the energy consumption of magnet-based micro- and nanotechnologies. Magnetic systems offer unique advantages for actuation in miniature fluidic and robotic systems, but their integration is hindered because electromagnets are required to create time-varying magnetic fields, causing joule energy loss and heat effects. Alternative control of magnetic materials using an electric field instead of electric current would present an energy-efficient solution. However, established magnetoelectric effects are small and restricted to low temperature or high voltage. Recently, we have demonstrated low-voltage control of magnetic films in liquid electrolytes by exploiting electrochemical reactions and ionic motion. ACTIONS targets the engineering of these emerging magneto-ionic materials to use their immense unexplored potential for low power actuation. The innovative strategy of ACTIONS is to transfer magneto-ionic effects of ferromagnetic metal thin films in liquid electrolytes to 3D nanomagnets and assemblies with defined anisotropy and at critical points. I will use a unique combination of in situ analytical and magnetic techniques to study the magneto-ionic control of magnetization; on this base I plan to attain magneto-ionic micromagnets with voltage-reconfigurable stray fields, which can potentially replace microelectromagnets. Additionally, ACTIONS recognizes the inherent cross-link between electrochemistry and magnetism in magneto-ionic systems as a ground-breaking route to combine actuation and sensing in one material. Interfacial chemistry sensing will be based on the electrical response. The final objective is to identify materials in which actuation and sensing can be programmed on demand by a voltage protocol. The concept in ACTIONS goes beyond conventional multifunctional composites and could establish a paradigm change in magnetic technologies and a novel class of energy-saving smart materials.

Polarization over cultural issues and the rise of the populist radical right indicate a fundamental realignment of electoral politics in established democracies around a new political cleavage characterized by an antagonism between parochial and cosmopolitan values. RESPOL introduces residential mobility as a fundamental determinant of these developments. In advancing a novel research agenda on residential mobility, the project also integrates and provides new perspectives on existing research. Residential mobility exceeds the volume of international migration, on which much research on the rise of the radical right focuses, by a factor of three. Although its significance is recognized in demography and psychology, residential mobility has yet to be widely recognized in political science. Psychological research considers residential mobility an essential driver of cultural change and has shown how mobile communities foster individualism and tolerance through frequent interactions with strangers. In contrast, immobile communities promote stability and stronger social ties but intensify perceptions of in-group and out-group differences. The relevance of these observations has been highlighted in the wake of `Brexit,' framed by some as a confrontation between rooted `somewheres' and mobile `anywheres,' but the political impact of residential mobility lacks systematic study. Drawing on research in psychology and social capital theory, the project will develop a comprehensive theoretical account of how residential mobility affects political attitudes and behavior to explain electoral realignment in established democracies. The project will use innovative combinations of cross- and sub-national data on residential mobility and political outcomes to systematically test its theoretical propositions at the individual and aggregate levels. In doing so, RESPOL promises to significantly advance our understanding of the evolution of political conflict in electoral democracies. We postpone the start of the project until after 30 September 2025. In this case there would be no ambiguity about my engagement by Chemnitz University of Technology. Regarding the groundbreaking nature of the project: As outlined in my proposal, to date there are only three journal publications in demography/geography and one journalistic book on the potential influence of residential mobility on political opinions or voting choices, none of which are able to provide the causal evidence that my project aims to provide. I am not aware of any new publications that have come out since I submitted my proposal. As outlined in my proposal, I am only aware of two unpublished working papers on the political effects of residential mobility, one of which I co-authored. The author of the other working paper seems to be more interested in the effects of residential mobility on civic and political engagement than on political attitudes and voting or electoral realignment more broadly. As for the specifics of my research proposal, nothing in the research design requires that the project begin at any particular point in time. The proposal calls for unique survey work to be conducted in Germany, Sweden, and the United States. Given the 5-year duration of the project and the maximum 4-year term lengths for national legislatures and/or executive branches in Germany, Sweden, and the U.S., I am guaranteed to be able to cover at least one national election per country case study with a unique survey, regardless of the start date of the project. In summary, I am optimistic that a later start date would not negatively impact the groundbreaking nature of the project.