How can you design materials to store and transmit energy more effectively?

High-energy-density nanomaterials and composites are needed for energy storage and transmission. Batteries and supercapacitors benefit from optimized chemical composition and structure. Low-resistance materials are essential for transmission. Nanotechnology and new crystal formations boost electrical and thermal conductivity. Innovating energy storage and transmission materials requires a multidisciplinary approach involving materials science, chemistry, and physics.

Ultimately, energy is stored in the form of chemical reactions. This can be - a phase change, where the material does not show macroscopic composition changes, or - a reaction involving mass transport, such as used in batteries. In any case, Gibbs energy G is the most fundamental property you must know. It will tell you what reaction is feasible (DeltaG < 0!) and what is the heat of reaction. Calphad modelling software such as FactSage provides such Gibbs energy data for the different phases.

Well, to design materials that can store and transmit energy more effectively, scientists and engineers use various approaches. They explore different materials and their properties, such as conductivity, durability, and energy storage capacity. By understanding these properties, they can develop materials like advanced batteries, supercapacitors, and conductive materials for efficient energy storage and transmission. It's an exciting field with ongoing research and advancements.

It depends on what energy to store. However, from the molecular level, one of the main properties of materials is the thermodynamics. This is widely known in heterogeneous catalysis, hydrogen storage, CO2 capture, electrochemical storage, etc. Chemical potential of the materials, such as late transition metal atoms in their nanoparticles, is one of useful descriptors of the materials’ activity in sintering, adsorption of small molecules, and conduct certain chemical reactions.

For the storage and transmitting energy more effectively, there should be a multidisciplinary approach that connects materials science, nanotechnology, chemistry, and physics. So materials are the key to the storage and transmission of energy.

Calorimetric methods can be used to evaluate heat release or uptake during heating or cooling, allowing the evaluation of reactions.

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) can show the nano-morphology of a material revealing therefore a detailed structure which can help better understand the atomic structure.

Microcalorimeter can measure the calorimetric of the materials from physical vapor deposition at molecular level. It thus then can provide the calorimetric heat versus particle size data, which can then be used to calculate the chemical properties of the materials.

Técnicas in-situ e operando s?o fundamentais no estudo das materiais e dispositivos de armazenamento de energia, permitindo observar mudan?as em tempo real durante o carregamento e descarregamento. Essa análise em tempo real ajuda a identificar problemas e aprimorar materiais para dispositivos mais eficientes e duráveis.

I'd like to expand on my earlier discussion by sharing a practical experience in addressing thermal challenges within PIC. In one particular instance, I successfully integrated two distinct materials to mitigate thermal issues affecting the performance of my devices. As you might know, athermal resonators are indeed a fascinating approach to tackling wavelength shifts due to thermal heating. The concept of utilizing materials with varying thermal properties, such as positive (e.g. Si) and negative thermo-optic coefficients (e.g.TiO2), is an innovative way to counteract these shifts. In my example, combining materials with distinct TOC values creates a balance. This allows for manipulation of the thermal response within the system.

One difficulty in materials optimization comes from the fact that chemical space is so vast. Each element makes up one dimension so that materials scientists need to navigate a very high-dimensional parameter space. Besides gut feeling, modelling using e.g. density functional theory or Calphad can help a lot.

Heterogeneous (HI) integration in materials science means combining different materials with unique qualities to make new structures that work better or do new things. Hybrid gives us a way to team up materials so they become superstars, working together to make energy storage and transmission much more efficient and versatile. Here's why it's useful: Stronger together: Combining different materials can make something even better than each material on its own. Custom-made: It lets us make materials that do exactly what we need for storing or moving energy. Multitalented materials: doing more than one job. That can make systems simpler and cheaper. Doing more with Less: means less energy is wasted, and getting more out of what we put in....

In energy storage, there are very often challenging conditions (high temperatures, corrosive environments, charged batteries far away from equilibrium). It is important to carefully evaluate the response of the materials to these conditions.

It is a good choice to start with density functional theory calculations when considering materials that had not been evaluated before. This can be done e.g. using VASP or by looking into databases with calculation results such as materialsproject.org or oqmd.org. One has to be careful though since accuracy of these (especially concerning formation enthalpies) is imperfect.

I addition to this, High energy storage density multilayer capacitors of ceramics are also the cutting edge research choice to overcome these requirements. Solid state Sintering processing is the commonly applicable way; but cold Sintering is the more sustainable procedure which is emerging as a novel technology to synthesize ceramics at extremely low temperatures. For the characterisation, Impedance spectroscopy is the key technique to understand the electrical microstructure of these kinds of energy materials.

As regards to material characterization specially for the purpose of energy storage, it is always good to understand what impacts the performance of the materials. Having done my Ph.D thesis focused on studying the degradation process of organic materials in solar cells, specially the degradation caused by oxygen (from air/humidity/rain), time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF SIMS) is a great instrument to use for understanding the profile of oxygen diffusion through the different layers of the cells.