Column by Professor Nini Pryds published in Energy Supply, November 2023
To successfully achieve the green transition, it is imperative that research and industry do not run in two parallel tracks decoupled from each other. The academic world should utilize corporate knowledge and experience—and the business sector should leverage the results and studies published by researchers. DTU is known and recognized for being one of the best universities in the world at industry collaboration, and we would like to expand this even further in the development of new energy materials.
At DTU, we have established new open laboratory facilities called E-MAT. This is a platform that provides completely new opportunities for conducting research into functional energy materials. The key is that the laboratory facilities are open. This means that they can be booked by companies, or companies can collaborate with us to develop new efficient and environmentally friendly energy materials to boost the green transition of our society.
In fact, we need a common platform where we can find out together what the materials can be used for, and where we can jointly resolve the problems that the current energy technologies pose for businesses.
What are the energy materials of the future to be used for?
I have no doubt, that in the future we will develop groundbreaking energy materials that can become attractive components for industry. Solid-state batteries are an example where I expect the research can support the development of wireless sensors in the IT industry, in electric cars, and for applications in the healthcare sector.
But what exactly are the material properties that we need in order to develop and accommodate new energy technologies? Imagine for example if you could charge your electric car in a few seconds or prolong the lifetime of your battery to tens of years. The industry can best set up these requirements based on their knowledge of market needs and challenges in relation to the commercialization of new energy technologies.
Technologies such as batteries, solar cells, fuel cells (electrolysis cells), and a wide range of other important energy technologies are largely affected by the quality of their layered interface. This is what limits the performance of these technologies. We can now control these interfaces at the atomic scale with the advanced equipment in E-MAT, enabling us to produce a new generation of energy materials. If we take into account the industry's wishes for material properties, early in the development stage, we can create energy technologies that can more quickly be commercialized, reach consumers, and be of benefit to society.
New materials open up completely new opportunities
We now have the opportunity to rethink the energy materials of the future. Take, for example, my research project, NEXUS, which is an EU-funded basic research project (ERC grant) in the E-MAT laboratory. Here, we fabricate and study the properties of materials at the atomic level. In other words, we explore how to develop an entirely new class of ultrathin oxide materials that can be freely stacked and twisted, almost like a stack of Lego building blocks, to achieve the most optimal arrangement of interfaces for the transfer of electrons and ions. The goal is to discover new materials that can conduct ions and electrons more rapidly.
Even though this is fundamental research, I would like to involve industry at this early stage in the work. The question of how ions move in materials, for example, is extremely relevant for the battery industry. Right now, we are limited by a battery’s capacity to transport ions—where it can take up to several hours to fully charge an electric car – and control of this transport will be essential to determine how quickly we can charge and discharge the batteries of the future. It is therefore crucial for companies such as Tesla to follow and be part of this development.
With E-MAT, we now have a joint platform where we can research and develop materials from the atomic level to the macro level using, for example, 3D prints of tangible components that you can test. This speeds up the process from research to commercialization of new energy technologies. For industrial users of the laboratory facilities, this means that it will be easier to manufacture, test, and upscale the production of new energy materials for components, while also making it possible to reduce the size of existing energy technologies and increase their efficiency.
E-MAT removes barrier
Energy technologies depend on rapid transport of ions and electrons across the interface between materials in materials. It is therefore important that the industry is involved at an early stage in the development of new energy materials, gaining insight into how ions move through the materials and how to control this.
As an open access laboratory, E-MAT removes the barrier to establishing collaboration between industry and academia. We now have a joint laboratory platform—the strongest of its kind in Europe—for advanced research and development of surfaces, interfaces, and structures for energy materials.
This means that E-MAT also has the potential to become an example for how academic-corporate collaboration can flourish and contribute effectively to the green transition.
Read more about E-MAT and how to book facilities: https://emat.dtu.dk/
