We are grateful that our collaborative review paper (led by Amir Razmjou) obtained the Best Review Paper in Desalination 2023–2025 Award from the Elsevier Journal Desalination.
Our team competed this year again at the International Olympiad in Electrochemical Material Science, which starts to become a bit of a tradition. This year, Energetic People (Stefanie Arnold, Peter Burger, Anna Seltmann) won the 3rd place! 🏅A special thanks to Fyodor Malchik for organizing this amazing event!
Volker Presser has been listed as a Highly Cited Researcher (2025 edition) by Clariate.
We are happy to announce Wensen Wang having received the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers to carry our research on ion separation! We are excited!
New paper published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. We present a mildly synthesized aluminum layered double hydroxide (Al-LDH) electrode that couples chemical adsorption with electrochemical release to recover lithium at neutral pH, eliminating harsh acids or bases and minimizing secondary pollution. It achieves an average Li+ uptake of 57.6 mg/g with strong Li+ over Na+ selectivity (vs. 1.0 mg/g for commercial Al(OH)₃ over 15 cycles), positioning Al-LDH as a scalable, green candidate for next-generation direct lithium extraction.
Delvina Tarimo gives an oral presentation on “Influence of Porous Structure, Sulfur Loading, and Cathode/Solid Electrolyte Interphase Formation Using Carbonate and Ether-Based Electrolyte for Lithium-Sulfur Batteries”
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.
Welcome new group member Burak Ölmez! He will be working on high performance battery electrodes in his new role as a Ph.D. student in our team.
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!
Our recent work on “Competing ion effects and electrolyte optimization for electrochemical lithium extraction from spent lithium iron phosphate battery cathodes” has been featured on the front cover of RSC Energy Advances.
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!
Liying Xue presents our work on multi-component composition materials at the at the 40th topical conference of the International Society of Electrochemistry with the exciting topic of interfacial electrochemistry and related topics. Her poster has the title: “Multi-element synergy to enhance the cycling performance of oxalates as anode materials for lithium-ion batteries” and she will present during the poster session in Changchun, China. Thanks to our collaborators: Chaochao Dun and Oliver Janka.
New paper published in ACS Applied Energy Materials on lithium-sulfur batteries. Our collaborative work explored microporous carbon cathodes with carefully tuned pore sizes, tested in both carbonate- and ether-based electrolytes. Our study shows how pore structure and cathode–electrolyte interphase formation impact cycling stability and sulfur utilization. With optimized microporosity, we achieved over 50 mass % sulfur loading and improved performance in carbonate electrolytes. Thanks to all authors (in order of the manuscript) Delvina Tarimo (PhD), Francisco J. Garcia-Soriano, Alen Vizintin, and Christian Prehal.
New paper published on electrochemical lithium-ion battery recycling in Energy Advances. We demonstrate a sustainable, energy-efficient electrochemical route to recover Li⁺ from spent LFP using carbon-coated LFP electrodes, with NaOH-adjusted electrolytes giving the highest efficiency and an average removal capacity of 18 mg Li per 1 g of LFP over 50 cycles. Capacity fades with prolonged cycling (especially with competing Na⁺ and K⁺) highlighting the need to optimize electrolyte conditions and electrode stability while exploring alternative pH control and scalable designs for circular, low-impact battery recycling.
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.
