On May 2nd, a delegation of 10 members of the Electrochemical Society (ECS) Student Chapter of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) visited Ulm´s ECS Student Chapter, which is the youngest and -after Munich- the second student chapter of the ECS in Germany. Founded at the beginning of this year, the members the Student Chapter Ulm are currently PhD students from different electrochemical research groups, e.g. from the Helmholtz Institute Ulm (HIU), Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research (ZSW) and Ulm University (UU). At the ZSW in Ulm, the lab-tour took the participants via the 10.000 m² ZSW Laboratory for Battery Technologies (eLaB) over to the H2 filling station and to the laboratories for hydrogen analysis, as well as to the fuel cell test center. At the HIU the lab-tour and a presentation displayed the combination of fundamental and applied research. During this meeting, both Student Chapters from Munich and Ulm could not only start networking on shared scientific topics, but they were also able to start planning future events, to improve the interdisciplinary competence of every student, according to the ECS guidelines:
“The mission of an ECS student chapter is to provide students the opportunity to foster a greater understanding as well as promote electrochemical and solid-state science and technology amongst its peers, to further enhance their professional development and to enrich their academic experience.”
Open to all graduate (PhD) students / Postdocs working on electrochemistry in the area of Ulm, the goals of the student chapter is to share and enlarge knowledge, as well as to establish collaborations amongst different research groups in the area of Ulm and the south of Germany. To become a member of the Student Chapter Ulm, you also have to be a member of the Electrochemical Society. ECS membership offers free access to ECS journals and discounts for ECS meetings and publishing fees. For Student Chapter Members, ECS membership is free.
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the Ulm University (UUlm) and the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) strengthen their collaboration in the area of Electrochemical Energy Storage. Founded on Jan 1, 2018, the Center for Electrochemical Energy Storage Ulm-Karlsruhe (CELEST) plans, prepares and organizes new joint endeavors in research, teaching, development and technology transfer. CELEST shall act as a platform to improve communication and to co-ordinate and further develop joint activities with other universities and research institutions as well as the industry, at home and abroad. With 30 institutes, which are active in the field of electrochemical energy storage, CELEST represents the largest research platform for this topic in Germany.
“CELEST is a logical next step in linking the Ulm and Karlsruhe locations more closely. The HIU as a joint institute of the KIT and the University of Ulm with its structure represents a nucleus of this now extended network”, emphasizes Maximilian Fichtner, director of HIU.
The expertise at both sites is complementary and ranges from basic research on the atomic scale to the largest pilot plant for cell production in Germany. The three institutions will co-operate on interdisciplinary research and development ranging from basic research to technical applications and on the qualification of students.
“CELEST places emphasis on Li-Ion technology, Energy Storage Beyond Lithium and Alternative Techniques for Electrochemical Energy Storage and covers all current topics in this field. On the topic Energy storage beyond lithium the platform takes up a national and international top position, says Fichtner.
At the two-day biennial meeting with 120 participants, the researchers presented their research results of the last two years and discussed and decided on the direction for the future. The scientific exchange was tailored to the four HIU interdisciplinary topics – Metal Deposition and Interfaces, Insertion Materials and Electrode Structure, Lithium Based Conversion Materials and Alloys, Batteries Beyond Lithium. In each of the four topics, members of different research groups efficiently pool their competencies in this way.
Maximilian Fichtner and Stefano Passerini, Director and Deputy Director of the HIU, emphasized the numerous new international collaborations concluded in the last two years and the very good publication average with two publications per researcher per year. In addition, the up to now successful application for the federal government’s excellence strategy and the establishment of the battery research platform CELEST make optimistic for future research work.
The Kick-off meeting of CELEST and the first general assembly of its members took place at the HIU, Ulm. The CELEST members elected the spokespersons of the three research areas, actively discussed joint projects and decided on future activities and strategies for the research platform. The CELEST steering committee nominated Prof. Maximilian Fichtner as director of CELEST and Prof. Helmut Ehrenberg as deputy director of the center. The meeting laid a strong foundation for fruitful collaboration and impressively illustrated the broad range of scientific competences gathered among the CELEST members, paving the way for new joint endeavors in electrochemical energy storage.
The article “Aqueous/Non-aqueous Hybrid Electrolyte for Sodium-ion Batteries” is among the most read articles for the past month on the website of the journal ACS Energy Letters.
The team of researchers directed by Stefano Passerini reported an aqueous/nonaqueous hybrid electrolyte based on sodium trifluoromethanesulfonate with an expanded electrochemical window up to 2.8 V and high conductivity (∼25 mS cm–1 at 20 °C). The hybrid electrolyte inherited the safety characteristic of aqueous electrolytes and the electrochemical stability of nonaqueous systems, enabling stable and reversible operation of the Na3V2(PO4)3/NaTi2(PO4)3 sodium-ion battery.
Dagmar Oertel will leave the HIU in mid-September to take on new professional challenges as Secretary General of the Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities. Since January 1, 2012, she has served as Managing Director and played a key role in creating an infrastructure at the HIU that enables innovative research. The institute was launched in a very short time in 2011 and has grown considerably to this day. At Dagmar Oertel, all organizational threads ran together to make this process successful. She established an administration with 14 employees in the areas of personnel, finance, public relations, IT and technology. Since the beginning of her career at HIU, she has coordinated the construction of the new institute building on the part of HIU, which was constructed in October 2014 by the state of Baden-Württemberg with a volume of 12 million euros and 2,400 square meters. Her time as managing director also saw the inauguration of the solar power storage system in spring 2015, which combines modern high-performance batteries with intelligent control for grid-conserving feed-in.
Dagmar Oertel studied chemistry and earned her doctorate in economics and worked at the Office for Technology Assessment of the German Bundestag for more than ten years. In 2007, she moved to Karlsruhe and accompanied the founding process of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), where she was deputy head of the Strategy, Structure and Development Planning department in the KIT presidential staff from 2009.
The HIU research group led by Axel Groß has made it on the back cover of the journal Energy & Environmental Science of the Royal Society of Chemistry with its element-specific theory – why battery electrode materials differ in their propensity for growing dendrites. Burning mobile phones or electric cars bursting into flames are caused by the formation of dendrites in batteries. The results could help solve the safety problems with the shrub-like crystal structures that can cause short circuits.
The researchers looked for battery materials that do not form any dendrites at all. While lithium, zinc and sodium batteries often form these spark-inducing structures, magnesium and aluminum batteries are virtually dendrite-free. In order to better understand dendrite formation, they therefore looked for a connection between the self-diffusion barriers of different metals. These barriers are the interfaces that reduce the diffusion of an atom on a surface of the same element and determine how likely it is that metal atoms deposit on electrodes and cause dendrite growth.
By studying the different metals, Axel Groß and his team found that lithium ions have relatively high self-diffusion interfaces, which means that once they have diffused a gradient onto a surface, the lithium ions remain there and form a rough area. The dendrite then branches from this defect. This suggests that dendrite formation is an inherent property of this element. In comparison, metals such as magnesium have a very low self-diffusion barriers and form smooth surfaces, so dendrites occur much less frequently.
The theory was also discussed in a separate news item in Chemistry World:
For more information: pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2018/EE/C8EE01448E
The Analysis of the CO2 footprint and life‐cycle costs of different batteries for stationary applications by scientists from HIU and the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), published in “Energy Technology”, has been named one of the journal’s best articles of the year 2017.
The article CO2 Footprint and Life‐Cycle Costs of Electrochemical Energy Storage for Stationary Grid Applications determines life-cycle costs and greenhouse gas emissions of different battery technologies within stationary applications. It is part of the special issue “Energy Research at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology”.
The authors use an innovative combination of life cycle assessment, uncertainty simulation and battery size optimization. In contrast to previous works, they apply dynamic load profiles for the optimization of the size and lifetime of batteries and consider the potential influence of future technology developments like changing electricity mix or battery price decreases. Lithium-Ion batteries are found to be among the most promising battery technologies, due to their high performance and comparatively long lifetime. Classic lead-acid batteries, although cheap on the first glimpse, are less recommendable for stationary applications due to their low lifetime and efficiency.
The HIU is currently looking for applicants from the fields of electrochemistry, chemistry, physics or material sciences for a tenure track professorship in applied electrochemistry. The position with its own young investigator group will be located at the HIU and at the KIT Faculty of Chemistry and Biosciences. This junior professorship (W1) with tenure track is funded by a joint program of the federal republic and the federal states to foster young academics.
The new research group will focus on issues relating to the development of innovative energy storage materials. This includes their synthesis and the characterization of their physico- and electrochemical properties and, in particular, the investigation of structure-activity relationships for electrochemical energy storage devices and its components (electrodes, electrolyte and the corresponding interfaces) – especially for lithium-ion and post-lithium-ion systems. The extensive basic equipment for the position, the infrastructure of the HIU as well as the manifold cooperation possibilities with research groups at the locations Ulm and Karlsruhe enable successful research at an internationally leading battery research institute.
The successful candidate will be employed for four years and in case of a positive intermediate evaluation the employment will be extended to six years. In case of a positive final evaluation, the successful candidate will be permanently appointed as professor
The new federal republic-federal states program will for the first time established the tenure track professorship nationwide at universities in Germany. For many young scientists, the path to a professorship will become considerably more transparent and predictable: After a successful probationary phase, the tenure track professorship provides for the immediate transition to a lifetime professorship. The aim is to fund a total of 1,000 tenure track professorships by 2032. To this end, the federal government will provide a total of up to one billion euros from 2017.
Which electrolyte is best suited for magnesium batteries to prevent rapid aging and dendrite formation? How can the substrate be optimized to absorb the active material? How can the processes in magnesium batteries be better understood through modelling?
Around 100 scientists from different countries are currently investigating these questions in Ulm. They take part in the 2nd International Symposium on Magnesium Batteries from 27th to 28th September at the Maritim Hotel Ulm. After 2016, the HIU is organising the Symposium on Magnesium Batteries for the second time.
The aim of the symposium is to discuss the current state of research and to present future scenarios. The 24 lectures and even more posters of the symposium deal with the topics electrolytes and additives, electrode interfaces, cathodes, anodes, modelling and systems.
Compared to lithium, magnesium can release and absorb two electrons each, making it a very interesting material for battery research. Magnesium batteries represent a lithium-free alternative in the field of “high-voltage batteries”. The advantages are obvious: magnesium is less reactive and therefore less dangerous. With magnesium, fewer dendrites are formed during charging, which are the main safety challenge when lithium metal anodes are used. It is also cheaper to manufacture because it reacts less quickly with air than lithium metal and can therefore be processed more easily. Magnesium is more sustainable than conventional battery materials and is present in large quantities, for example in the form of rock dolomite, which results in lower prices. Magnesium batteries could also act as stationary energy storage devices, for example in wind power plants or solar fields.
