Welcome to the department of Prof. Katharina Landfester

Physical Chemistry of Polymers

The Landfester Group 2023

The Landfester Group 2023

We view it as our mission to create colloids with increasingly specific and complex properties for new materials and bio-medical applications and to use the confinement of stable nanodroplets to tune chemical reactions and transformation processes. Particles suspended in a liquid, known as a colloid, are versatile and flexible in their uses. They are found everywhere in our daily lives, from mother's milk to adhesives and automobile paint to the most modern technologies. The special properties of colloids can therefore be adapted in each case to the intended purpose. That facilitates the enormous versatility of the miniemulsion process. From the encapsulation of dedicated molecules, like drugs, self-healing agents etc. through to generation of extremely small nanostructures, these simple spheres can be utilised with a highly uniform size and a defined functionality of the surface. The significance of the miniemulsion technique is that it is possible to use a wide variety of polymerization techniques with a wide range of monomers. Hereby important factors like size, shape, degradation, release kinetics, surface functionalization can be precisely tuned as requested. The continual progress in knowledge about the properties of nanoscale objects and their interactions with living tissue like cells or with electromagnetic radiation opens diverse opportunities.


Events

Prof. Kai A. I. Zhang Memorial Symposium 
Following the untimely passing of Prof. Kai Zhang in May 2023 we will be hosting a memorial symposium at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research on 14th June 2024. more

How artificial cells are synthesised
Dr. Lucas Caire da Silva and Prof. Dr. Katharina Landfester, together with other scientists, have managed to recreate an artificial cell in such a way that individual compartments fulfil the functions of a biological cell. more
Nanocapsules for Drug Delivery
The research group led by Prof. Dr. Katharina Landfester lets you take a look behind the scenes. The video explains the individual synthesis steps in the laboratory and which quality controls have to be passed to be able to produce the "perfect" nanocapsule. more

Highlight Publications

Assembly of Multi-Compartment Cell Mimics by Droplet-Based Microfluidics
T. Ivanov, S. Cao, T. P. Doan-Nguyen, H. Bremm Madalosso, L. Caire da Silva, K. Landfester
ChemSystemsChem 2023, 5, e202300034

© 1999-2024 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. more
Anti-PEG antibodies enriched in the protein corona of PEGylated nanocarriers impact the cell uptake
M. Deuker, V. Mailänder, S. Morsbach, K. Landfester
Nanoscale Horizons 2023, 8, 1377

© The Royal Society of Chemistry 2023 more
Endosomal sorting results in a selective separation of the protein corona from nanoparticles
S. Han, R. da Costa Marques, J. Simon, A. Kaltbeitzel, K. Koynov, K. Landfester, V. Mailänder and I. Lieberwirth
Nat. Commun. 2023, 14, 295

© MPIP more
Confining the Sol-Gel Reaction at the Water/Oil Interface: Creating Compartmentalized Enzymatic Nano-Organelles for Artificial Cells 
J. P. Gonçalves, D. Promlok, T. Ivanov, S. Tao, T. Rheinberger, S.-M. Jo, Y. Yu, R. Graf, M. Wagner, D. Crespy, F. R. Wurm, L. Caire da Silva, S. Jiang and K. Landfester
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2023, 62, e202216966

© 1999-2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved more
Tunable Photocatalytic Selectivity by Altering the Active Center Microenvironment of an Organic Polymer Photocatalyst
J. Heuer, T. Kuckhoff, R. Li, K. Landfester and C. T. J. Ferguson
ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2023

© 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society more

Media

Projekt „Escape“
Frederik Wurm stellt das Projekt „Escape“ vor, in dem es um die Bekämpfung der Weinrebenkrankheit „Esca“ geht. Der Film wurde im Rahmen der 75-Jahr-Feier von Rheinland-Pfalz gedreht. more
Der Kunststoff Bildungspfad
Was weiß ich eigentlich schon alles über Kunststoffe? Vieles kennt man aus dem Schulunterricht, noch mehr aus den Medien, oft mit dem Ergebnis: Es gibt zahlreiche verschiedene Kunststoffe, aber warum und mit welchen Funktionen? Schlecht für die Umwelt ist ein Argument, das uns ständig begegnet. Aber weiß ich auch, wann genau Kunststoffe umweltschädigend sind und wann sie ein echter Wertstoff sind? more
The guest commentary by Prof. Katharina Landfester on "Chemistry of colours" at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt is now online.

Science meets art

The guest commentary by Prof. Katharina Landfester on "Chemistry of colours" at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt is now online.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJk8BFYtLZk
Talkshow and documentary about plastics
Prof. Katharina Landfester had a TV show appearance at 3Sat Scobel. more

Seminars and lectures

Prof. Katharina Landfester joined Sarah Köster (University of Göttingen) and Joachim Rädler (LMU Munich) to present and discuss the many possibilities of microfluidics in the field of biomimetic material sciences. This online event was part of the discussion series organized by the Max Planck School - Matter to Life. Now available on YouTube.

Microfluidics

Prof. Katharina Landfester joined Sarah Köster (University of Göttingen) and Joachim Rädler (LMU Munich) to present and discuss the many possibilities of microfluidics in the field of biomimetic material sciences. This online event was part of the discussion series organized by the Max Planck School - Matter to Life. Now available on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zVx3rHAFYg
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