Princeton-Oxford-Cambridge Centre-to-Centre Collaboration on Soft Functional Energy Materials

避免气候变化的危险后果，向可持续利用自然资源的社会过渡，是人类目前面临的最重大的生存挑战之一。在技术层面，需要先进的能源材料，不仅是为了维持现有零碳能源技术的渐进进步，也是为了应对需要颠覆性突破的开放技术挑战。新型、新兴的能源材料，如钙钛矿型半导体和用于太阳能收集和光伏的有机/生物启发材料，或用于电池的先进电极材料，为实现比现有能源材料更高的性能、更低的成本和更好的环境可持续性提供了巨大的机会。然而，人们对它们运作的许多方面仍然知之甚少。这与它们相对无序的非单晶微结构有关，具有对器件操作至关重要的复杂界面，以及弱的、非共价键合的官能团和分子单元的存在。这使得材料在机械上变软，晶格振动的动力学对电荷载流子和电子激发有很大的影响。然而，他们对这种静态和动态无序的表现出人意料地宽容，这为材料探索打开了广阔的空间，因为我们显然并不总是需要结构上的完美。这种中心到中心的合作将剑桥大学和牛津大学的能源材料研究人员团队聚集在一起，他们得到了VETSOFT EPSRC计划拨款的支持，以及普林斯顿大学安德林格能源和环境中心的世界领先的研究人员团队。这两个中心都拥有国际领先的跨学科团队，具有广泛的互补技术和科学能力，可以跨越与不同材料系统和/或应用有关的传统边界进行应用和共享。通过不在传统的竖井中工作，可以实现强大的协同效应。这是VETSOFT计划拨款的核心，该计划汇集了致力于软功能能源材料的研究人员，这些材料在光伏、光催化、热能收集和储能方面有不同的应用。类似的哲学也支撑着普林斯顿的安德林格中心，该中心拥有一套在很大程度上相互补充的能力。拟议的中心到中心合作旨在实现对软功能能源材料中重要物理过程的更深层次原子理解和控制，进而推动能源材料性能和新设备概念的切实增强。我们确定了三个重大研究挑战(RC)，两个中心之间的合作具有很高的附加值，需要两个中心提供互补的科学能力和方法。中心到中心的协作将使我们能够以比任何参与团体本身更有效的方式解决这些问题。前两个RCS解决了阻碍钙钛矿半导体在太阳能电池和电池电极材料中应用的科学瓶颈：我们将开发金属卤化物钙钛矿半导体的受控掺杂方法和基于能够快速充电的Nb-Wx氧化物的新型电池负极材料。第三个目的是对生物能量收集中的能量转移过程有一个更深层次、更基本的了解。拟议的中心与中心之间的协作还将鼓励两个中心小组之间在先进能源材料方面开展其他探索性研究项目，从而使两个中心之间的伙伴关系持续有效，超过拟议项目的四年供资期。

Averting dangerous consequences of climate change and transitioning to societies that use our natural resources sustainably is one of the most existential challenges currently facing humanity. At the technological level, advanced energy materials are needed not only to sustain incremental advances in existing zero-carbon energy technologies, but also to address open technology challenges requiring disruptive breakthroughs. New, emerging classes of energy materials, such as perovskite semiconductors and organic/biologically inspired materials for solar energy harvesting and photovoltaics, or advanced electrode materials for batteries offer great opportunities for achieving higher performance, lower cost and better environmental sustainability than existing energy materials. However, many aspects of their operation remain poorly understood. This is related to their relatively disordered, non-single crystalline microstructures, with complex interfaces that are critical for device operation, and the presence of weakly, non-covalently bonded, functional groups and molecular units. This makes the materials mechanically soft and the dynamics of lattice vibrations has a strong effect on the charge carriers and electronic excitations. However, their performance is surprisingly tolerant to such static and dynamic disorder, which opens a wide space for materials exploration as we apparently do not always need structural perfection.This centre-to-centre collaboration brings together a team of energy materials researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford supported by the VETSOFT EPSRC programme grant with a world-leading group of researchers at Princeton University's Andlinger Centre for Energy and the Environment. Both centres have internationally leading, interdisciplinary teams with a broad spectrum of complementary techniques and scientific capabilities that can be applied and shared across traditional boundaries associated with different materials systems and/or applications. By not working in traditional silos, powerful synergies can be achieved. This is at the heart of the VETSOFT programme grant, which brings together researchers working in soft functional energy materials for diverse applications in photovoltaics, photocatalysis, thermal energy harvesting and energy storage. A similar philosophy also underpins Princeton's Andlinger Centre, which has available a largely complementary set of capabilities.The proposed centre-to-centre collaboration aims to achieve a deeper atomistic understanding and control of important physical processes in soft functional energy materials, in turn driving tangible enhancements in energy materials performance and new device concepts. We have identified three grand research challenges (RCs) for which there is a high added value from the collaboration between the two centres and for which complementary scientific capabilities and methodologies available at the two centres are needed. The centre-to-centre collaboration will allow us to tackle these in a more effective way than any of the participating groups could on their own. The first two RCs address scientific bottlenecks that are holding back the application of perovskite semiconductors in solar cells and of electrode materials for batteries: We will develop approaches for controlled doping of metal halide perovskite semiconductors and new battery anode materials based on niobium tungsten oxides capable of fast charging. The third one aims to achieve a deeper, fundamental understanding of energy transfer processes in biological energy harvesting. The proposed centre-to-centre collaboration will also provide a vehicle for encouraging other, exploratory research projects in advanced energy materials between groups at the two centres, that will lead to a sustained, effective partnership between the two centres outlasting the 4-year funding period of the proposed project.