Materials and Devices for Energy Storage and Energy Conversion

 

Energy storage and conversion devices are of great interest to academic and industrial researchers. The device performance can be enhanced by designing and synthesizing materials with desirable properties. Similarly, device performance is also related to device design. Therefore, material and device design have been the primary objective of our group. We rationally design and synthesize organic materials (small and polymer molecules), carbon materials, and metal nanostructures. Some of the materials used in our devices are shown below.

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Subsequently, we conduct experiments to understand the structure and material property relationships. With a thorough understanding of the materials' properties, we fabricate devices. We can fabricate efficient dye sensitised solar cells, batteries, supercapacitors, and field effect transistors with this approach. Our current focus is on fabrication of Li-ion, Li-S and Na-ion batteries. Recently, we started working on multivalent ion batteries. Some of the molecules synthesized for Li-ion and Li-S batteries are suitable for Zn-ion and Al-ion batteries.

 

Organic materials can be added to existing electrolytes without changing existing manufacturing line of the batteries. Those additives will impact the batteries operating voltage and temperatures. If the operating voltage is increased, the energy density can be boosted. Please note that the energy density is the user time. Considering the fundamental impact and their utility in industries, we have a renewed focus on additives for electrolytes. Many organic additives have been synthesized and tested in Li-ion and Na-ion batteries.   

 

Conversion of insulating substrates to conductors has been an objective for a long time. We use the extracts of green tea to deposit various metals on synthetic and natural substrates. The shape and size of the substrate are not restricted. A wide variety of sizes and shapes have been used to deposit metals. They are being explored in hydrogen separation, devices, electromagentic shielding and smart textile applications. Some of the metal structures prepared by our approach are shown below.

 

 

 

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      Chayanika, Sathish, Senthil and Sharmin

 

We have developed a scalable approach to prepare flexible EMI shielding substrates. With the humongous growth of electronics as well as the introduction of 5G, EMI shielding has become essential. The market is worth several billion USD. We have developed a deceptively simple process to prepare paints and flexible substrates that show impressive -80 dB electromagnetic shielding, which is far better than many commercially available products across the globe. The shielding data measured at a defence lab is provided below.