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New paper published on reduced graphene oxide particles decorated with Prussian blue for hydrogen Peroxide Sensing in ACS Omega

New paper published on “Freestanding Films of Reduced Graphene Oxide Fully Decorated with Prussian Blue Nanoparticles for Hydrogen Peroxide Sensing” in ACS Omega.

This work explores freestanding graphene/Prussian blue (PB) electrodes for detecting hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). Using a two-step method, we synthesized reduced graphene oxide/PAni/Fe2O3 freestanding films, followed by electrochemical deposition of PB nanoparticles. This approach balances the structure of the electrodes with their electrochemical performance for H2O2 sensing.

Thanks to all authors for this Brazilian-German collaboration: Vitor H. N. Martins, Monize M. da Silva, Daniel A. Gonçalves, Samantha Husmann, and Victor H. R. Souza.

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Delvina Tarimo starts her Humboldt Fellowship with us

Delvina Tarimo (PhD) Tarimo has started her Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH) Fellowship in our group. Delvina has a strong background in Materials Science. With a Ph.D. from the , her work was dedicated to electrochemical energy storage, with a focus on bio-sourced carbons and supercapacitors. Delvina’s fellowship project explores advanced lithium-sulfur batteries using MXene and activated carbon composites. She will look at fundamental mechanisms of these materials and optimize toward enhanced performance. We are grateful to have Delvina with us and we are excited about the joint journey ahead of us!

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Welcome new postdoc Dr. Meenu Meenu!

Welcome to your new Postdoc Meenu! She will be working on Lithium-sulfur batteries and advanced electrode materials.

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New review paper on gel electrolytes for functional energy storage devices published in Chemistry of Materials

New review article “Functional gel-based electrochemical energy storage” published Chemistry of Materials. This paper reviews the research field of gel polymer electrolytes (GPEs), which combine the ionic conductivity of liquid electrolytes with the mechanical stability of solid materials. GPEs are versatile materials in various electrochemical applications, including sensors, actuators, and energy storage devices. These quasi-solid materials can withstand significant mechanical stress, making them attractive for flexible and wearable electronics. This collaborative work was done by Jean Gustavo De Andrade Ruthes, Stefanie Arnold, Kaitlyn Prenger, Ana C. Jaski, Vanessa Klobukoski, and Izabel C. Riegel-Vidotti.

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Panyu Ren presents a poster on the role of conductive additives for CDI at the ISE topical meeting in Stresa, Italy

Panyu Ren gives a poster presentation on the topic “Carbon additives: friend or foe of capacitive deionization with activated carbon?” at the 37th Topical Meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE) in Stresa, Italy.

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New team feature video

Thanks to the creativity of Uwe Bellhäuser and the patience and positive energy of our whole team, we are happy to launch now our new team feature video – to share our team’s excitement about research and to showcase the real heroes and heroines of science: the people of our group! Enjoy the video and get inspired… to join us. 🚀 Explore! Create! Apply!

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Collaborators Jonas Oehm presents poster at the Meeting of the Electrochemical Society, San Francisco, USA

Jonas Oehm presents a poster with the title “On the development of a digital data management platform for battery material and processing data?” at the 245th Meeting of the Electrochemical Society in San Francisco (USA).

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New paper published in Energy & Environmental Materials on continuous lithium-ion extraction via fuel cell desalination

New paper published in Energy & Environmental Materials. A few years ago, then-PhD-student Zhang Yuan explored with us the adoption of a fuel cell for continuous water desalination. Basically, a fuel cell can be “fooled” to desalinate an inflowing water stream by replacing the common proton exchange membrane with a flow channel, contained within a pair of an anion and a cation exchange membrane. Thereby, while consuming fuel (e.g., hydrogen and oxygen), electricity is generated and water desalted all at once. Now, we have moved one step further: making fuel cell desalination lithium-ion selective for direct lithium-ion extraction from seawater or mine water (other water media work too).

Our team, lead by Cansu Kök, and with Lei Wang, Jean Gustavo De Andrade Ruthes, Antje Quade (from the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP Greifswald) e.V.), and Matthew Suss (from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology; now at Form Energy), has developed the first-ever fuel cell system designed specifically for continuous lithium-ion extraction. This approach utilizes a lithium superionic conductor membrane alongside advanced electrodes to enhance efficiency and environmental sustainability.

A titania-coated electrode in our fuel cell achieves a 95% lithium-ion purity and produces 10.23 Wh of energy per gram of lithium. Thanks to atomic layer deposition, we’ve significantly improved the electrode’s uniformity, stability, and electrocatalytic activity, maintaining stability even after 2000 cycles.

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Several Ph.D. students present their work at the Saarland University PhD Day

It is a tradition at the Natural Science Faculty of Universität des Saarlandes to have the annual PhD Day in the Aula. This year, 60 PhD student presented their research, ranging from artificial muscles, to much real mucus, from 3D printed nanofluids to very solid metals, from quantum communication to quorum sensing inhibitors. From our team:

Nikolaos Papadopoulos shared his insights into electrochemical modelling.
薛丽颖 introduced us to the concept of high-entropy battery electrodes.
Jean Gustavo De Andrade Ruthes demonstrated the exciting field of gel electrolytes.
Panyu Ren taught us the value of electrochemical ion separation.
And Le Thao presented the latest results from our collaboration with the spherogel team of Michael Elsaesser on hybrid carbon spherogels for battery applications.

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Welcome short-term Humboldt visiting Professor Dominik Barz

Welcome Prof. Dominik Barz from Queen’s University (Canada) for his 1-month research visit to our laboratory to work on supercapacitors with us. We thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for the funding of the visit.

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Volker Presser presents work on electrochemical desalination with MXene at the RIC2D symposium in Dresden

Volker Presser attended the RIC2D symposium “unlocking the challenges of water scarcity: 2D materials in action” and gave an oral presentation on “Electrochemical Desalination with MXene”.

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Nikolaos Papadopolous presents a poster at the Advanced Battery Power Conference on Modeling of Gr/Si Lithium-Ion Batteries

Nikolaos Papadopolous presents a poster at the Advanced Battery Power Conference in Münster, Germany with the title “Electrochemical Modeling of Gr/Si Lithium-Ion Batteries with prolonged Relaxation Times considering Kinetic, Mechanical, and Geometric Cell Characteristics”.

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Paper “P2-type layered high-entropy oxides as sodium-ion cathode materials” wins Materials Futures 2023 Best Paper Award

The IOP Journal “Materials Futures” has included our paper led by alumnus Qingsong Wang in the collection of the “Materials Futures 2023 Best Paper Award”.

J. Wang, S.L. Dreyer, K. Wang, Z. Ding, T. Diemant, G. Karkera, Y. Ma, A. Sarkar, B. Zhou, M.V. Gorbunov, A. Omar, D. Mikhailova, V. Presser, M. Fichtner, H. Hahn, T. Brezesinski, B. Breitung, Q. Wang, P2-type layered high-entropy oxides as sodium-ion cathode materials, Materials Futures 1(3) (2022) 035104.

https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/2752-5724/page/news-and-editorial

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Welcome short-term visiting EEIGM student Bachir Tall

Welcome EEIGM student Bachir Tall, who will be working on supercapacitors during his 2-month internship.

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Stefanie Arnold selected as a fellow to attend the 2024 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting

Dr. Stefanie Arnold was selected to attend the 2024 edition of the prestigious Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. She is one of only 650 young scientists selected in a highly competitive process from across the globe. This year, the topic is physics and Stefanie’s positive energy and visionary research perspective will enrich the LINO24!

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Stefanie Arnold wins 2nd place in the RSC poster competition

Congratulations to Stefanie! Her poster “High-Performance Lithium-Ion Batteries with High Stability Derived from Titanium-Oxide- and Sulfur-Loaded Carbon”, a direct result from our collaboration within the FWF-DFG project SPHEROGELS, won 2nd place in the Energy Category at the 2024 RSC Poster competition!

Link to the original publication: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.3c16851

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New paper published in Carbon on Hydrogen densification in carbon nanopore confinement

New paper in Carbon on hydrogen densification in carbon nanopore confinement: Insights from small-angle neutron scattering using a hierarchical contrast model from our long-term collaboration with Oskar Paris (Montanuniversität Leoben).

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New review paper published in Langmuir on multi-channel membrane capacitive deionization

New paper published in Langmuir on emerging frontiers in multichannel membrane capacitive deionization. Spearheaded by our group alumni Choonsoo Kim, together with Hyunjin Kim, Seonghwan Kim, and Byeongho Lee from Kongju National University, our joint work dives deep into the advancements and future prospects of MC-MCDI technology. We explore how this innovative approach not only pushes the boundaries of efficiency and sustainability in addressing global water scarcity but also sets new benchmarks for electrochemical desalination.

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Volker Presser gives seminar talk on electrochemical desalination at the École normale supérieure in Paris

Volker Presser gives a seminar talk with the title “Electrochemical desalination and Lithium-ion extraction” at the École normale supérieure on invitation of former group member Lucie Ries.

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New battery published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces on sulfidized carbon spherogels for high performance lithium ion batteries

New battery published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces on hybridization of carbon spherogels with titanium oxide and sulfur enables high performance lithium-ion battery electrodes. As a result from our research project with Michael Elsaesser from the Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg, we introduce a novel approach to enhancing lithium-ion battery electrodes. We have successfully combined titanium oxide and sulfur with carbon spherogels, achieving high performance in terms of stability and capacity. Our method resulted in electrodes combining high charge storage capacity and electrical conductivity, while maintaining a core-shell morphology. The process involved producing carbon spheres encapsulating titania and sulfur using a template-assisted sol-gel route, followed by thermal treatment with hydrogen sulfide gas. This treatment fully preserved the microporous hollow sphere architecture of the carbon shells, facilitating sulfur deposition and titania crystal protection.

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