Nanomaterials Overview

With energy at the forefront of the national economy and security energy-directed applications are of particular interest. Not surprisingly, energy and materials are intimately related. Research at the EME EI is aligned with future grand challenges for energy and material needs in the areas of energy storage, conservation, transfer, efficiency, control and generation.

The philosophy of the EI nanoprogram is that the elementary steps of energy transformation, storage, efficiency, conservation, control, conversion and generation (e.g. charge transfer, molecular rearrangements, chemical reactions, etc.) take place on the nanoscale, as interfacial processes.

Therein nanomaterials acting as interfacial modifiers can profoundly alter the energy landscape.

At the Energy Institute, our approach generally flows along:

1. development of new nanoscale materials by model, design and experiment
2. using electron microscopy and spectroscopy based methods to characterize,
3. employing physical and chemical processes to manipulate and assemble them followed by performance evaluation either as a material or integrated into a device/system.

Payoff

Potential to creates an entirely new paradigm for revolutionary energy technologies.

Co-Directors