Symposium EQ02—Harnessing Functional Defects in Energy and Electronic 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 and electronic materials where such profound role of defects manifest in a controlled manner. However, harnessing functional defects in energy and electronic 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.

To address the pressing opportunities and difficulties, we envision this symposium to highlight most recent trends, applications and forefront challenges in developing and harnessing functional defects in a wide range of energy and electronic 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 and electronic applications via a combination of theory, high-throughput computations and machine-learning/artificial intelligence; 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. The goal of this symposium is to provide an interactive forum for scientists from various fields who wish to develop and harness functional defects in energy and electronic materials towards emerging applications. We hope this symposium would help the materials scientists from various backgrounds to understand and take advantage of predictive design, smart synthesis/control and advanced characterization approaches to solve the pressing problems.

• Synthesis of functional defects in nanostructures, two-dimensional layered structures, heterostructures, polycrystalline and substrate-support systems
• Progress of defect-enabled/enhanced electrochemical, photocatalysis, light-harvesting, ionotronic/neuromorphic computing, and smart sensing applications
• Methodological advances in theory, high-throughput computations and machine-learning/artificial intelligence for predictive modeling and design of functional defects
• Multi-scale methods to study the role of extended defects on the functionality of energy and electronic materials
• Visualizing creation and manipulation of defects dynamically in bulk, surface, interface and grain boundary of energy (e.g. batteries/fuel-cells/solar-cells/ultracapacitors) and electronic materials (e.g. ionotronic/neuromorphic materials, smart sensors)
• Structural diagnosis and quantitative analysis on the defects from atomic to meso and micro scale and their correlation to energy and electronic functionalities
• In-situ/operando characterizations of defects and defect transports
• Relevance of defects in the operation of photovoltaics, ranging from purely inorganic to hybrid-materials, such as hybrid-perovskites, etc.

• Tonio Buonassisi (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
• David Cahen (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel)
• Karen Chan (Technical University of Denmark, Denmark)
• Carsten Deibel (Technische Universität Chemnitz, Germany)
• Regina Dittmann (Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Germany)
• David Ginger (University of Washington, USA)
• Jinsong Huang (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA)
• Chen Ling (Toyota Research Institute, USA)
• Arun Mannodi Kanakkithodi (Purdue University, USA)
• David Mitzi (Duke University, USA)
• Orgiani Pasquale (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy)
• Nicola Perry (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
• Nini Pryds (Technical University of Denmark, Denmark)
• Elisa Riedo (New York University, USA)
• Junwoo Son (Pohang University of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea)
• Samuel Stranks (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom)
• Bobby G. Sumpter (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA)
• Jiang Tang (Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China)
• María Verónica Ganduglia-Pirovano (Spanish Council for Scientific Research, Spain)
• Venkat Viswanathan (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
• Aron Walsh (Imperial College London, United Kingdom)