High-Throughput Fabrication and Characterisation for Discovery of Novel Energy Materials

当然，技术发展和可持续经济增长所需的最重要因素是发现和开发新型先进功能材料。新材料的发现对于应对当今可持续环境、清洁能源生产和储存方面的全球挑战也至关重要。高效的太阳能燃料(能源)生产和电化学储能只能为从化石燃料向可再生能源的真正转变提供一条可持续的途径。阻碍这一转变的瓶颈是无法获得稳定、廉价和高效的材料。候选材料的宇宙非常广阔，传统的材料发现方法不太可能在足够短的时间内产生突破性结果。在这一变革性项目中提出的新颖、低成本的高通量实验旨在加快新材料发现的速度，以开发用于能源生产、储存和环境修复(光催化)的创新技术。在这个转型项目中，铁基二元金属氧化物将成为目标材料，结构式为ABO2、ABO3ABO4和AB2O4(其中A=碱、碱土、过渡金属、过渡金属和稀土元素，而B=Fe)。该项目的目标是每周制作和筛选60多个样品。铁基二元金属氧化物存在于一系列晶体结构(钙钛矿、钙钛矿、立方体和尖晶石)中，具有稳定性、地球丰度、廉价、能带结构、易于修改能带结构、结构依赖的导电性和通过一系列最先进的技术制备等令人兴奋的特性，使其成为本项目探索创新能源材料的理想候选者。最先进的喷雾热解(SP)技术将用于沉积样品的薄膜阵列，而电化学测量已被选择用于快速和简单地评估材料的能量转换、存储和光催化应用。拟议项目的突破性性质结合了材料设计、化学、纳米技术、电化学、光化学、反应动力学和设备结构的不同元素，并不局限于能量生产、存储和环境修复(光催化)。在这个变革性的项目中使用的材料和方法，可以转移到其他领域，如传感器、光响应开关、热电设备和电子陶瓷。这个以应用程序为主导的项目产生的知识将产生重大的经济和社会影响。

Certainly, the most important factor needed for technological development and sustainable economic growth is the discovery and development of novel advanced functional materials. The discovery of new materials is also crucial to address today's global challenges in sustainable environment, clean energy production and storage. Efficient solar fuel (energy) production and electrochemical energy storage can only provide a sustainable pathway for true transformation to renewable energy from fossil fuel. The bottleneck which hindered this transformation is the unavailability of stable, inexpensive and highly efficient materials.The universe of candidate materials is very vast and conventional approaches to materials discovery are not likely to yield breakthrough results on a short enough time scale. The novel and low cost high-throughput experimentation proposed in this transformative project aims to accelerate the rate of new materials discovery to develop innovative technologies for energy production, storage and environmental remediation (photocatalysis). In this transformative project, Fe-based binary metal oxide with structural formula ABO2, ABO3 ABO4 and AB2O4 (where A= Alkali, alkaline earth, transition, post-transition metals and lanthanoids while B=Fe) will be the target materials. The project aims to fabricate and screen more than 60 samples per week. The Fe-based binary metal oxide exists in a range of crystal structures (Delafossite, Perovskites, Cubic and Spinel) and has exciting properties such as stability, earth abundance, inexpensive, band structure, ease in band structure modification, structure dependent conductivity and fabrication by a range of state-of-the-art techniques which make them an ideal candidate to be explored as innovative energy materials in this project. The state of the art spray pyrolysis (SP) technique will be used to deposit thin film array of samples and electrochemical measurement has been chosen for speedy and easy evaluation of energy conversion, storage and photocatalytic applications of materials.The ground-breaking nature of proposed project, which combines different elements of materials design, chemistry, nanotechnology, electrochemistry, photochemistry, reaction kinetics and device architecture is not limited to energy production, storage and environmental remediation (photocatalysis). The materials and methodology used in this transformative project, can be transferred to other fields such as sensors, photo-responsive switches, thermoelectric devices and electro-ceramics. Knowledge generation from this application-led project will have a significant economical and societal impact.