It was an honor to meet and talk with Saarland Minister-President (prime minister) Tobias Hans during his visit to INM. We discussed our research on alternative batteries and energy-efficient lithium-ion-battery recycling. Read more about the visit online and on LinkedIn (our LinkedIn, the INM LinkedIn, and the PM’s LinkedIn). We are grateful that, the very […]
New review paper published in Electrochemistry Communications. Energy-efficient technologies for the remediation of water and the generation of drinking water are essential to sustainable technologies. However, we cannot have sustainable energy technology without sustainable water remediation (and vice versa). Among many possible applications, large-scale seawater desalination is a much-needed step towards large-scale hydrogen generation via […]
New paper published in Cell Press Physical Science on the use of sub-nanometer pores for capacitive deionization to enable membrane-free seawater desalination. Big pores are mighty powerful when it comes to capacitive deionization (CDI). CDI is highly appreciated as a potentially energy-efficient desalination technology, rendering saline water into desalinated (potable/processable) water. However, once we move […]
New paper published in Desalination with the title “Particle size distribution influence on capacitive deionization: Insights for electrode preparation”. Our work explores the particle size dispersity of commercially available activated carbon. No activated carbon powder is “perfect”, that is, every powder contains (a bit) larger and smaller particles. Size separation allows to capitalize on “one […]
New paper published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. This work in collaboration with the teams of Markus Gallei and Guido Kickelbick (both at Saarland University) explores shear-induced co-assembly as a step towards creating unique (ordered) materials. The latter can be conveniently converted to metal oxide / carbon hybrids via thermal annealing. For example, titanium […]
New article published on the exploration of high entropy materials in the digital age in Advanced Energy Materials. This work was done in collaboration with the KIT (via Ben Breitung and Leonardo Velasco) and is being featured on the front title page.
New paper published in the AAAS journal Research on the use of hollow / nanosheet / needle-like cobalt hydroxide for the use for high performance electrochemical desalination. This material architecture allows for rapid ion removal and high stability in absence of strain-build-up. This work was done in collaboration with the team of Jie Ma at […]
New paper published in Journal of Physical Chemistry C on the origin of better long-term electrochemical performance of silica-pillared MXene. This unique material provides enhanced performance as an lithium-ion battery electrode (ca. 300 mAh/g at 20 mA/g rate). Although larger volume changes are seen for the pillared MXene, this is not a detriment to the […]
New paper published in ACS Applied Polymer Materials on the use of redox-responsive 2-aminoanthraquinone core-shell particles for structural colors and carbon capture. This work was done in collaboration with the group of Markus Gallei (Saarland University), Karin Jacobs (Saarland University), and T. Alan Hatton (MIT).
We are very fortunate to welcome new group members to our team! Bowen Dong is joining us as a Ph.D. student supported by the China Scholarship Council. Bowen has graduated from China University of Geosciences (China) and will be working on MXene batteries. Jerome Baudin is joining us as a EEIGM student. Jerome is enrolled […]
Volker Presser will be giving an invited oral presentation at the MaterialsWeek 2021 on “Ion mining: electrochemical extraction of ions from mine water and other aqueous media” on September 7th.
Mohammad Torkamanzadeh is giving an oral presentation entitled “Electrochemical seawater desalination with Ti3C2Tz MXene” at the 31st International Conference on Diamond and Carbon Materials (online due to COVID-19). Tune in on September 6th at 4:40 PM.
Two contributions from our team at the GDCh Science Forum Chemistry 2021: Mohammad Torkamanzadeh is giving an oral presentation entitled “MXene for electrochemical water treatment” on August 31st at 2:50 PM. Lei Wang is presenting a poster entitled “Evolution of electrochemical desalination technologies”.
Volker Presser is giving an invited oral presentation entitled “Electrochemical water desalination with MXene” at the 2021 ACS Fall Meeting in Atlanta, USA. Due to the pandemic situation, the contribution was made via video from Saarbrücken. His contribution was part of the special symposium honoring Yury Gogotsi for receiving the American Chemical Society (ACS) Chemistry of […]
New paper published in Current Opinion in Electrochemistry on three generations of electrochemical desalination. Starting with capacitive deionization with carbon in the 1960s to desalination batteries in the 2010 to now including electrocatalytical processes, the field of electrochemical desalination has become truly diverse.
New paper published in Sustainable Energy & Fuels on the degradation processes of lithium iron phosphate during electrochemical lithium recovery. Removal of dissolved oxygen suppresses the degradation but also coating of LFP with a thin layer of carbon. This work was done in collaboration with the group of Guido Kickelbick at Saarland University.
Welcome to our team, Panyu Ren! Ms. Ren is a graduate from the Chinese Northwestern Polytechnical University and will be working on flow electrodes.
New paper published in ACS Nano on the significantly reduced wear on a metal surface after electro-spray coating with MXene. The work was spearheaded by colleages from Austria (TU Vienna) and Saarland University (MECS), and capitalized on the synergy of collaboration between Austria, Chile, China, Germany, and the United States of America. Our work also […]
New paper published in Cell Reports Physical Science on the use of a conventional fuel cell concept, enhanced by an additional flow channel, for the facile and continuous desalination of seawater. The device consumes oxygen and hydrogen gas and produced electricity, desalted water, and an acid/base couple which conveniently can be used to generate heat.
Volker Presser presents on May 12th at the CDI&E 2021 conference work on desalination fuel cells with the title “Charge-transfer enabling of electrochemical interfaces: the third generation of capacitive deionization”.