October 12th, 2022
Prof. Dr. Stefano Passerini has been awarded this year’s Alessandro Volta Medal.
The award ceremony took place during the 242nd meeting of the Electrochemical Society (ECS) in Atlanta (USA) on October 12, 2022. The society awards the prize every two years for outstanding research work in the field of electrochemistry and solid state research.
The jury recognized Passerini’s research activities in the development of materials for high-energy batteries and supercapacitors. These pursue the goal of creating sustainable energy storage systems from environmentally friendly and available materials.
The Italian chemist, currently deputy director of the Helmholtz Institute Ulm, received the award in particular as a pioneer in the field of ionic liquids and the development of sodium-ion batteries. Stefano Passerini has been one of the most cited scientists in this field for years and has already published more than 600 articles in specialist journals, books and conference papers.
Sodium-ion batteries are the focus of Passerini’s research group. These cells are made of materials that are described as available, particularly inexpensive, powerful and at the same time long-living. Therefore, these batteries are also considered sustainable. Passerini expects sodium battery production to ramp up as early as next year.
Along with Passerini, Jerry Barker was awarded the Volta Medal. Jerry Baker is the co-founder of the British company Faradion Ltd. The start-up company sells first Sodium-ion batteries.
The award consists of a silver medal and $2,000 in prize money. Like every awardee, Passerini was invited to give a “Volta Award Lecture” on a certain topic of great interest. In his lecture (“From the Oil Barrel to Reactive Metals: An Approach to the Energy Transition”), Passerini presented various solutions of electrochemical storage models. According to Passerini, particularly reactive, metal-based storage systems based on aluminum and sodium are able to meet all sustainability and storage criteria. Both the steam combustion of molten aluminum to produce hydrogen and heat make interesting models. In addition, liquid saltwater batteries could one day help store energy electrochemically in seawater.
The Volta Medal was established by the “Europe Section” of the Society for Electrochemistry in 1998 to recognize outstanding achievements in electrochemistry and solid state scientific and technological research.
Alessandro Volta was an Italian scientist and is considered the inventor of electrochemistry. He is said to have invented the “voltaic pile”, known today as the first electric battery. The SI unit of electrical potential (voltage), better known as Volt, is named after him.
More information:
https://ecs.confex.com/ecs/242/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/168249
https://www.electrochem.org/volta-medal
https://www.electrochem.org/242/division-awards/