Symposium ET12-Harvesting Functional Defects in Energy Materials

Defects are ubiquitous in materials, and can alter its functionality – mechanical, chemical, electrical, optical, thermal etc. and their coupling with each other, in a profound manner. Not only are the ground-state properties modified, but also excited state properties as well as the material responses to external fields are significantly altered. Many compelling cases exist in energy materials where such profound role of defects manifest in a controlled manner. For example, recent active efforts have led to converting otherwise inert transition metal oxide materials and two-dimensional layered materials to create new (photo-)electrochemical active materials by dynamically varying the oxygen defect concentration and distribution (ordered or disordered) to couple existing physical properties. However, harnessing functional defects in energy materials present outstanding scientific and technical challenges to researchers since effective and efficient theoretical and experimental tools permitting us to rationalize, predict, observe, visualize and control defect formation, migration and interactions are largely limited or even unavailable. To address the pressing opportunities and difficulties, we envision this symposium to highlight most recent trends, applications, forefront challenges and breakthroughs in developing and harnessing functional defects in a wide range of energy materials via bridging expertise on theoretical modeling/simulation, materials synthesis, functional measurement/control, and advanced characterization. Particular attention will be paid to predictive design of functional defects for energy applications via a combination of theory, high-throughput computations and data-analytics; synthesis of defect structures in functional nanostructures and epitaxial heterostructures; control of functional defects formation/migration/ordering; the interplay between defect responses in ionic lattices and their manipulation by external fields; and use of transformative imaging capabilities to probe defect-driven phenomena in-situ along with their dynamics, etc. We hope this symposium would provide an interactive forum for materials scientists from various backgrounds to understand and take advantage of predictive design, smart synthesis/control and advanced characterization approaches of novel defects in energy materials.

Topics will include:

Synthesis of functional defects in nanostructures, two-dimensional layered structures, heterostructures and substrate-support systems
Progress of defect-enabled/enhanced electrochemical, photocatalysis and light-harvesting applications
Characterization, control and design of defect-induced emergent phenomena and phase transformations
Methodological advances in atomistic, multi-scale and data-driven approaches for predictive modeling and design of functional defects
Visualizing creation and manipulation of defects dynamically in bulk, surface, interface and grain boundary of energy materials
Relevance of defects in the operation of photovoltaics, ranging from purely inorganic to hybrid-materials, such as hybrid-perovskites, etc.
Structural diagnosis and quantitative analysis on the defects from atomic to meso and micro scale and their correlation to energy functionality
Principles of future development of defect engineering in energy applications related materials
In-situ and operando characterizations of defects and defect transports in energy materials
Novel developments in electron and scanning probe microscopy to probe defects in energy systems

Invited Speakers:

Y. Shirley Meng (University of California, San Diego, USA)
Alec Talin (Sandia National Laboratories, USA)
Filippo De Angelis (Institute of Molecular Science and Technologies, Italy)
Xiaolin Zheng (Stanford University, USA)
Joanne Etheridge (Monash University, Australia)
Yifei Mo (University of Maryland, USA)
Prasanna V. Balachandran (Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA)
Mariana Bertoni (Arizona State University, USA)
Valdimir Bulovic (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
Emily Carter (Princeton University, USA)
Anders Hagfeldt (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)
Sossina Haile (Northwestern University, USA)
Ho Nyung Lee (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA)
Jeremy Munday (University of Maryland, USA)
Ekaterina Pomerantseva (Drexel University, USA)
David O. Scanlon (University College London, United Kingdom)
Natalia Skorodumova (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Vladan Stevanovic (Colorado School of Mines, USA)
Andrew Ulvestag (Argonne National Laboratory, USA)
Pu Yu (Tsinghua University, China)

Symposium Organizers

Hua Zhou

Argonne National Laboratory

Advanced Photon Source

USA

[email protected]

Panchapakesan Ganesh

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

USA

Marina S. Leite

University of Maryland

USA

[email protected]

Topics

catalytic defects energy generation energy storage scanning probe microscopy (SPM) secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) thin film transmission electron microscopy (TEM) x-ray diffraction (XRD)