Sustainable materials for chemical and electrochemical energy storage II

Sustainable energy storage technologies such as electrochemical devices, thermal & hydrogen storage and P2X depend on advanced materials. Dwindling resources and increased focus on longevity require new design methods using computational simulations, ML & Big Data together with experimental efforts.

Scope:

The transition from fossil fuel-based energy towards renewable energy technologies has created a strong need for energy storage materials that provide efficient, long-lived, safe and environmentally benign energy storage. This task requires advanced materials, and their development requires a detailed understanding of the chemical and physical properties over multiple length scales, i.e. from the atomic to the mesoscale. Furthermore, to offer truly sustainable energy storage solutions, the functional materials themselves must also be sustainable. This sets new requirements for the material design in terms on the abundance of the required resources, the environmental impact of the material production and the potential for material recycling and disposal within a frame of circular economy.
To address these challenges, this symposium will bring together experts from different areas of energy storage materials, such as batteries, hydrogen storage, fuel cells, thermal storage and power-to-X (P2X) solutions. It will encompass computational modeling at different length scales, material preparation and recycling routes, structural characterization, property analysis and device fabrication. The overarching theme will be on material sustainability from cradle to grave and the underlying material recycling pathways. A particular focus will be given to state-of-the-art computational areas such as machine-learning (ML) techniques and utilization of Big Data for sustainable functional materials design.
The proposed symposium is highly interdisciplinary and aspires to bring together ambitious young and established scientists from all over the world to not only present the latest advances of the intense worldwide research, but also to exchange ideas and to identify key challenges and hot topics for future developments towards efficient solutions. We envision that by bringing together researchers from across the energy storage materials field, new research directions will emerge. 

Hot topics to be covered by the symposium:

• Environmentally benign battery materials
• Post-lithium ion battery technologies
• Hydrogen storage
• Fuel cells
• Thermal energy storage
• Materials for power-to-x technologies
• Raw material supply / value chains
• Advanced manufacturing of batteries
• Material regeneration/refurbishment
• Machine-learning and big data for functional materials design