News

Research

New DFG Project "Nitrogen Derivatives of Sulfuric Acid"

Our DFG project proposal “Stickstoffderivate der Schwefelsäure” has been approved in 2025. In April 2026, we have launched our research project.

Luminescence in Kyoto: Wickleder Group at ICL 2026

From 22 to 27 September 2026, our research group attended the International Conference on Luminescence (ICL 2026) in Kyoto, Japan, contributing two talks and a poster on divalent lanthanide compounds.

Paper

Catching Wyckoff’s Phantom: The Peculiar Crystal Structure of Orthorhombic Cs[ICl2]

In their recent ZAAC contribution Jan Langwald, Antonio Frontera, and Mathias S. Wickleder tackled “Wyckoff's Phantom”, an elusive orthorhombic crystal polymorph of caesium dichloroiodate (Cs[ICl₂]-II) that evaded selective isolation and verification for roughly a century.

Lecture

Jan Langwald presenting at the 9th Ligand Design Workshop

The research group of Professor Klein hosted on Monday, Aug. 03 2026, the 9th Ligand-Design-Workshop at the University of Cologne focusing mainly on coordination chemistry of 3d and 4f metal compounds.

Paper

Isolation and Structural Elucidation of the Pnictogen Polysulfate Compounds As₂[S₂O₇]₂[S₃O₁₀] and [SeCl₃][Pn(S₂O₇)₂] (Pn = Sb, Bi)

The study by Jan Langwald, Luisa Ebels, Marios Symeonidis, Jörn Bruns, Antonio Frontera, Mathias S. Wickleder (published in "ZAAC") reports the synthesis and characterization of two novel classes of pnictogen polysulfate compounds.

Thesis

Congratulations to our Master graduate Hendrik Klauser

We congratulate Hendrik for the sucessful defense of his Master thesis on "New Insights into Sulfonate Radicals". The second examiner was Prof. Dr. Jörn Bruns.

Doctoral Candidate

We welcome our new team member Clarence Yong!

Clarence joined us as a new research assistant in July 2026. Clarence is working towards his PhD and is based both here and in the Strub Working Group. We welcome him warmly to our Working Group.

Academic Staff

Welcome Lars Schumacher to our Team!

We are happy to welcome Dr. Lars Schumacher, our new academic staff member, to the team. Lars completed his PhD at the University of Münster (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster) in Prof. Dr Rainer Pöttgen’s research group at the Institute of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry. His research focuses on the field of inorganic solid-state chemistry, in particular the magnetochemistry of intermetallic phases.

Paper

The Versatile Structural World of Methanedi- and Trisulfonic Acid and Their Salts

In the ChemistryOpen article on “The Versatile Structural World of Methanedi- and Trisulfonic Acid and Their Salts” the authors present the syntheses and structural elucidations of 16 novel compounds, derived from methane(poly-)sulfonic acids via different synthetic approaches and an in-depth structural analysis of all compounds.

Paper

Chalcogen Bonding vs. Weakly Coordinating Anions

In our latest paper on "Chalcogen Bonding vs. Weakly Coordinating Anions – A Solid State Study on Halidoselenium Cations in an Oxoanionic Environment" Jan Langwald, Sergi Burguera Piña, Antonio Frontera and Mathias S. Wickleder turn their focus on the crystal structure of selenoyl chloride with remarkable outcomes.