Welcome our two new student interns, Elijah Gonzalez and Declan Siewert. Both are from Oregon State University and enroled in the ATLANIS bachelor program.

Simon Fleischmann has successfully defended his thesis “Hybridization ofelectrochemical energy storage: nanohybrid materials and hybrid cellarchitectures for high energy, power, and stability”.

Benjamin Krüner has successfully defended his thesis “Polymer-derived carbides and carbons with andwithout nitrogen-doping for electrochemical energy applications”.

Aura Tolosa has successfully defended her thesis “Electrospun carbon hybridfibers as binder-free electrodes for electrochemical energy storage”.

Our PhD students Öznil Budak, Hwirim Shim, and Simon Fleischmann present their work as poster contributions on today’s PhD Day of Saarland University at 2 PM in the Aula.

New a paper published in Langmuir on the ability to track solvation / desolvation or other constitutional changes with eQCM for carbon or insertion/intercalation materials. This work was in collaboration with Guang Feng (Huazhong University of Science and Technology) and Christian Prehal (Graz University of Technology).

Juhan Lee has successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Redox electrolytes for non-flow electrochemical energy storage”.

Mathias Widmaier has successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Improvement of hybrid supercapacitors by optimization of electrode design and material properties”.

There are several contributions of our team at the 69th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE) in Bologna, Italy. On September 6th, Simon Fleischmann will give an oral presentation entitled “Asymmetric hybrid supercapacitors using molybdenum oxide / carbon nanotube hybrid anodes”, Volker Presser will give a keynote presentation entitled “Water desalination with ion intercalation electrode materials”, and Juhan Lee will give an oral presentation entitled “Faradaic desalination with carbon/metal oxide nanohybrid electrodes”. There will also be two poster presentations: on September 4th, Juhan Lee will present a poster entitled “Potential-dependent, switchable ion selectivity in aqueous media using titanium disulfide”, and on September 5th, Pattarachai Srimuk will present a poster entitled “Potential-dependent, switchable ion selectivity in aqueous media using titanium disulfide”.

New paper published in ACS Applied Energy Materials on the facile use of free-standing and binder-free hybrid fiber mats composed of vanadium oxide and carbon. The obained electrodes show promising performance for lithium-ion and sodium-ion battery applications.

New paper published in Chemistry – A European Journal on promising strategies to hybridize electrically conductive nanocarbon and metal oxides with high ion intercalation capacity.

The  International Nanoscience Student Conference (INASCON) is taking place this year in Trondheim, Norway. On August 8th, Simon Fleischmann gives an oral presentation entitled “Design of carbon/metal oxide hybrids for electrochemical energy storage”. On August 9th, Jaehoon Choi gives an oral presentation entitled “Synthesis and characterization of a nanostructured lamellar vanadium disulfide / carbon hybrid material”.

New paper published in ChemSusChem shows the high desalination performance that can be achieved with the use of lignin-derived activated carbon. Considering the low cost and high availability of lignin, lignin-derived activated carbons are very attractive electrode materials. Our work show the importance to carefully balance the potential and charge of a desalination cell and to carefully consider the intrinsic chemical charge. Only by doing so, we were able to capitalize on the beneficial properties of lignin-derived activated carbon; a “conventional” symmetric cell yielded only a very poor performance instead.

New paper published in ChemSusChem on the use of ion-specific insertion potentials to switch the ion-uptake preference of titanium disulfide. Our proof of concept work exemplifies the switchable preference of titanium disulfide to uptake either Cs or Mg. We expect our concept to be adaptable to many other ionic systems and other electrode materials

New paper published in Batteries & Supercaps on the enhanced rate handling ability of valence-tuned lithium titanate for use in lithium-ion batteries. Our work was done in collaboration with Bosch and is being featured on the front cover of the inaugural issue of the journal.

New paper published in ACS Applied Energy Materials on the use of the MicroJet reactor for the synthesis of SiOC beads for lithium-ion battery applications. This work was in collaboration with Guido Kickelbick of Saarland University.

New article published in Energy Storage Materials on the use of ionic liquids in asymmetric hybrid supercapacitors. This work was done in cooperation with two industrial partners: Bosch and Iolitec.

Nicolas Jäckel has successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Structure and properties of supercapacitor and lithium-ion battery electrodes: The role of material, electrolyte, binder, and additives”.

New paper published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces on molybdenum oxide / carbon hybrids for energy storage. Using atomic layer deposition, our work highlights the importance of nanoscale material engineering to yield an optimized performance of hybrid lithium ion capacitors. This work was in collaboration with the INP Greifswald, which is a sister Leibniz institute.

Welcome new group members Marc Schmidt, Maike Ulbricht, and Yuan Zhang! Ms. Ulbricht and Mr. Schmidt are our new student interns from Saarland University. Ms. Zhang starts as a PhD student working on Faradaic materials and has a master’s degree from Ulm University.