2 Assistant Professor Energy grants awarded to EPFL
© 2016 SNSF
Swiss National Science Foundation Assistant Professor (AP) Energy Grants are aimed at promoting newly appointed Assistant Professors in the field of energy research. In November 2015, 12 applications were submitted in response to the 3rd AP Energy call for proposals. The SNSF awarded 4 AP Energy Grants (Call success rate: 33%), 3 of which were associated with a Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research. 2 of the 4 grantees are Tenure track assistant professors at EPFL.
Prof. Raffaella Buonsanti: Colloidal chemistry for engineering complex metal oxides to advance solar-to-fuel conversion studies
Laboratory of Nanochemistry for Energy, SB school
Storage of intermittent renewable energy in chemical bonds is an important research area to build a more sustainable society. Artificial photosynthesis mimics the natural photosynthesis by transforming sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into value-added chemicals (such hydrogen or hydrocarbons, fuels used for transportation). This project will contribute to advance the field of artificial photosynthesis by devising robust synthetic approaches to multinary oxide materials which absorb visible light. Colloidal chemistry will be employed, being one of the most powerful wet-chemistry approaches to control size, shape, composition of nanomaterials and their assembly in three-dimensional architectures. The fine tuning of composition and structural parameters at multiple lengthscales, afforded by this synthetic approach, will provide us with a competitive edge as structure/function correlations that are a necessary means to design new materials or chemically tune existing materials for the optimization of photoelectrochemical performance.
While this project will specifically focus on photoanodes, by developing a tool-box to make highly tunable nanostructured oxides, the obtained results will impact other research fields, from batteries to fuel cells and resistive switching memories, where complex metal oxides are key components.
Prof. Elison Matioli: High-Efficiency III-Nitride Power Devices for Future Energy Conversion
Power Lab, STI school
The future energy demand and carbon dioxide emissions will increase by more than 70% in the next 25 years. The solution to this huge challenge lies not only in creating more energy but also in wasting less with energy-efficient systems. One of the major sources of losses comes from an inefficient electric power conversion, such as AC-DC and DC-AC, which is present nearly in every electric system and wastes around 15-20% of all the electricity consumed in the world. This project proposes new power electronic devices (transistors and diodes) presenting much higher efficiency at smaller size, increased power density and improved thermal management that could lead to a reduction of more than 50% of the losses in power conversion.
To achieve this goal, this project uses III-Nitride semiconductors, which offer inherent advantages for high-efficiency power electronic devices. The challenge however, is that the performance of current III-Nitride devices is very far from the fundamental materials limits. Their future adoption depends on demonstrating devices with: i. Large blocking voltages with low off-state leakage current and small on-state resistance; ii. Normally-off operation for safety reasons and suitability to power circuits; iii. Efficient thermal management to allow larger power densities and smaller device sizes.
This proposal aims to engineer the device architecture in III-Nitride materials to demonstrate these properties simultaneously, which will lead to new device concepts for power electronics geared for an efficient future energy conversion. The potential breakthroughs of this project could lead to drastic improvements in efficiency in power conversion, and help to meet the huge future energy demand.
The submission deadline for the next and final call is November 18th 2016.