Two oral contributions to the DLE Symposium in Karlsruhe, Germany, from our team:

Cansu Kök: Tailored MXene electrodes for selective and stable electrochemical lithium recovery in aqueous solutions (oral)

Stefanie Arnold: Electrochemical perspectives for Li-ion battery recycling (oral)

Our team presents our energy research at the Citizen’s Festival in Saarbrücken, in celebration of the German Unification Day. From age 5 to 65, many participated in building own small water-electrolyte-based coin cell batteries – becoming honorary battery experts 🔋Thanks for the strong effort and hour-long dedication of Stefanie Arnold, Jean Gustavo Ruthes de Andrade, Asia Sarycheva, and Anna Seltmann 🌻

We have had the privilege to work with Anna Seltmann for quite some time – she re-joins now our team as our second technician and we are looking forward to the many exciting adventures and scientific discoveries ahead of us!

Welcome to our new Postdoc, Nicolas Huth! He will work with us on battery materials and technologies.

Saeed Borhani presents our collaborative work on “Iron-loaded carbon spherogels as sustainable electrode materials for high-performance lithium-ion batteries” at the Evonik meets Science 2025 in Heidelberg (Germany). The poster won also the best poster award. Congratulations!

Liying Xue presents a poster on our work on multi-component composition materials at the at the Faraday Discussion on “High-entropy alloy nanostructures: from theory to application” by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in London (UK). Thanks to our external collaborators Chaochao Dun and Oliver Janka!

Several contributions from our team at the 76th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE) in Main, Germany.

Volker Presser: Electrochemical lithium-ion separation (oral)
Stefanie Arnold: Electrochemical perspectives for Li-ion battery recycling (oral)
Delvina J. Tarimo: Influence of porous structure, sulfur loading, and cathode/solid electrolyte interphase formation using carbonate and ether-based electrolyte for lithium-sulfur batteries (oral)
Mingren Liu: Electron-rich niobium oxide subnanoclusters boosting charge transfer for highly reversible Na-S Batteries (poster)

Welcome to our new Postdoc, Dr. Asia Sarycheva! She will support our research activities relating to MXene and material characterization capitalizing on her many skills and expertise. We are looking forward to the joint work and time ahead!

We are grateful for the Minister to take time to visit the science exhibition ship MS Wissenschaft, anchoring in Saarbrücken, Germany. We discussed climate change, scientific discoveries, basic and applied research – specifically as it pertains to our research on lithium-ion battery recycling.

We are grateful for the Minister visiting our group to learn more about the EFRE-funded eLiFlow project to continuously harvest lithium-ions from aqueous solutions.

We enjoyed our annual group retreat – due to a booking issue, reduced to one day, but no less fun! We enjoyed our group dinner, as won by popular vote, in the Vietnamese restaurant Yoko in Saarbrücken. For the scientific talks, we mixed things up: rather than all Ph.D. students and Postdocs presenting theirworks… each one was assigned a partner with a topic as different as can be within our group – and each person needed to present his/her partner’s research. 🚀

As another highlight, we had Hanna Sänger from Arenus Akademie (Tatjana Heidemann) to give a seminar on mental health. Mental health is as important as physical health – yet, it is met by stigma and taboo, as the mind reminds an opaque mystery and people rather accept what they can “see” over what they feel. Nonetheless, how we feel about ourselves and work is of highest importance and the foundation for a sustainable, productive, and healthy work life. Thanks for giving us an introductoin in this important topic (in excellent English that put myself to shame).

Thanks for our Humboldt-visitor, long-term collaborator, and true friend Michael Naguib for joining us! 💡We also got our traditional group picture done, once more, by the one and only Uwe Bellhäuser 🌼 and thank Elke Bubel for helping us so much for securing the photoshooting spot in front of the NTNM library! 📚

Looking forward to our next retreat already! And we will make sure to find a replacement appointment for some well-overdue minigolf ⛳

Panyu has successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis on “Electrochemical water desalination for ion separation toward ion-selectivity and sustainable materials”. All the best to you and your continued career!

Our team was, as is tradition, part of the Open Campus and presented our work on next-generation batteries, sustainable water remediation, elemental recovery, battery recycling and interactive elements, such as a vegetable/fruit battery challenge and a build-your-own-battery challenge.

An annual tradition: our team at the PhD students’ day of Universität des Saarlandes 🎓

Cansu Kök answered the question on how to design electrochemical tools for the direct lithium-ion separation from seawater (and Saarland mine water): “Continuous lithium-ion extraction via fuel cell desalination”; work in collaboration with Lei Wang, Jean Gustavo De Andrade Ruthes, Antje Quade, and Matthew Suss.

Nikolaos Papadopoulos presented his inspiring modelling + experimental work on “Physical modeling of silicon-containing Li-ion batteries through a multi-species multi-reaction model” to design high-performance Si-based lithium-ion batteries; work in collaboration with Oliver Queisser and Simon Schwunk.

Liying Xue presented the power of multi-phase material design on high-capacity lithium-ion batteries: “Multi-phase synergy enhances lithium storage performance of oxalate”; work in collaboration with Oliver Janka and Chaochao Dun.

Welcome our visiting Ph.D. student Yassine Seffar from UM6P – University Mohammed VI Polytechnic. Yassine will be working with our team on ion-selective and advanced electrochemical desalination.

Mingren Liu and Delvina Tarimo (PhD) have been selected to participate in the 74th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. At present, Mingren works on nanoporous carbon supercapacitors and advanced battery chemistries, pushing the boundaries of energy storage. And Delvina focuses on lithium-sulfur batteries and sustainable electrode materials, driving the next generation of green energy solutions. Congratulations, Mingren and Delvina! You are the 6th and 7th member of our team to experience LINO!

Volker Presser gives two oral presentations at the MATSUS conference in Sevilla, Spain:

  • NEMX25 Symposium: MXene and hybrid electrodes for high performance energy storage (March, 3rd)
  • ELECTROWAT25 symposium: Electrochemical Lithium-ion separation (March, 5th)

Welcome Burcu Tan who will be working on electrochemical lithium ion extraction in our team on the eLiFlow project.

Our PhD student Cansu Kök presents a poster at the 2024 Fall MRS with the title “Continuous Lithium-Ion Extraction via Fuel Cell Desalination”