Energy Materials

The group at the Conclave Meeting in Schöntal in July 2019.

An increasing fraction of renewable energies is expected to contribute to the global energy demand in the future and energy storage systems are needed for an efficient use of discontinuous sources such as wind and solar power. In this context, nanostructured architectures employing a 3-D structuring for power storage and conversion (batteries, supercapacitors, hydrogen storage materials, fuel cells, photovoltaics) provide many advantages over existing technologies to minimize power losses, improve charge/discharge rates, and enhance energy densities, because functional units in these architectures consist of interconnected ~10 nm domains and mesopores (10-50 nm), for example. In this regard, nanoscience and nanotechnology offer promising approaches as all the elementary steps of energy conversion (charge transfer, molecular rearrangement, chemical reactions, etc.) take place on the nanoscale.

For practical reasons, it is one of the favourable options to store energy in electrical and chemical storage devices such as batteries and supercapacitors.