We have several contributions to the 29th ISE Topical Meeting Energy and water: electrochemistry in securing the sustainable society development. On April 19th, Yuan Zhang is giving an oral presentation on “Sub-nanometer carbon confinement: pore size effect on ion permselectivity and selectivity”. On April 21st, Volker Presser is giving an oral presentation on “Beyond the double-layer: charge-transfer processes for high-performance desalination batteries”. Also, Stefanie Arnold is giving an oral poster presentation on “Antimony alloying electrode for high-performance sodium removal: how to use a battery material not stable in aqueous media for saline water remediation”.

Welcome new Postdoc Dr. Qingsong Wang! Having obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and worked at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) Institute of Nanotechnology, he will be working on MXene and other next-generation electrode materials.

Welcome visiting Ph.D. student Antonio Gentile! Antonio is from University of Milano-Bicocca (group of Riccardo Ruffo) and will be working in the coming six months on MXene electrode systems.

New paper published in Chemical Engineering Journal on the correlation of ion size / hydrated ion / pore size of sub-1-nm carbon pores. The work was done in collaboration with the team of Guang Feng (HUST, China). The work demonstrates how ion selectivity in mixed ionic systems cannot reliably be predicted by single-salt baseline testing. Also, we demonstrate the importance of durability testing since effects such as ion sieving may very well vary and change over time.

Welcome new Ph.D. student Yunjie Li! Having done her Master at Shandong University, Yunjie will be doing her Ph.D. study with us on lithium-ion batteries.

Welcome new Master Student Wyatt Bellville! Wyatt is enroled at the AMASE program and will carry out his 6 month Master thesis in our team on the topic of MXene derived electrode materials.

Broadcasted online and free to join, Volker Presser is presenting work on electrochemical desalination at the Chemistry Colloquium of Missouri S&T; see online for more details:

https://chem.mst.edu/seminars/colloquium/

I gratefully acknowledge that today, my google scholar h-index reached a new, round number: 60! This is a great achievement and testament the hard work of our team and to our many collaborators!

https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=mLEj95MAAAAJ

New paper published in Macromolecular Rapid Communications on mechanochromic and pH dependend properties of dye loaded opal structures. This work was done in collaboration with Markus Gallei (Saarland University).

New paper published in ChemSusChem on the use of carbide-derived oxide for high performance lithium-ion battery application. The mechanochemical synthesis of the carbide is of particular interest because of potentially environmentally friendly processing route. This work was done in collaboration with Lars Borchardt (RUB).

New paper published in Journal of Materials Chemistry A on the use of antimony for water desalination. This may sound, at first, like a contradiction when considering that Sb is not stable in water; yet, the use of a ceramic membrane and an organic electrolyte environment engulfing the antimony electrode allows the stable and high-performance removal of sodium via the antimony – sodium – alloying reaction.