ISCF Wave 1: North East Centre for Energy Materials

大量世界领先的国际研究旨在应对能源(发电和储存)、气候变化以及与寻找可持续方法满足我们日益增长的能源需求相关的全球挑战。这些努力主要集中在使现有技术更强大、更高效、更便宜，或者发现转换、储存和传输可再生能源的新方法。对于在自己研究领域内工作的工程师、化学家、生物学家和物理学家来说，不可能认识到给定能源系统的所有关键问题。这些问题存在于极其广泛的长度范围(nm-m)，因此需要物理科学和工程技术之间更多地合作，以传播新材料发现的成功，并了解这些新材料的行为，以实现持久、高效、可持续和可制造的能源系统。东北能源材料中心(NECEM)由纽卡斯尔大学、达勒姆大学和诺森比亚大学组成，寻求联合三个地点现有的广泛专业知识，以应对能源材料的重大挑战，并将使其有可能与当地、国家和国际行业进行广泛合作。NECEM的主要重点将是解决所有能源系统中最根本的关键要素之一，即其中的材料之间的界面及其与其运行环境的相互作用。NECEM的目标是成为了解和操纵能源材料中这种界面的世界领先方案。我们的愿景是确定、探索我们独特的材料发现、分析技术和能源应用的混合，在全长度范围(nm-m)上操作的新方法，以克服现有的限制，如腐蚀、电荷捕获、海洋污染。通过解决以前未探索的方向，NECEM有能力在更有效地使用、产生和存储能源的材料的科学和工程领域提供迫切需要的一步变革。NECEM的资产包括海洋能源(潮汐能和波能)、太阳能(光伏和光电燃料)、燃料电池(氢气和酒精为基础，也包括酶和微生物)、能源储存(锂离子、氧化还原液流电池)、生物质(气化、发酵和直接转化为热能甚至电力)和本地智能电网结构(同时生产和消费可再生能源)等领域的广泛专业知识。我们邀请能源材料社区与我们的中心接触，以获得这一专业知识和我们分布在三个地点的表面处理和表征技术的独特组合。探测和操纵发生在表面和界面上的过程异常复杂，但通过将我们最先进的设施(非常适合于这一挑战)与我们在材料行为建模方面的专业知识相结合，我们可以推动新的耐用、高效和可持续能源解决方案的开发。我们正准备与英国的其他中心合作，以便能够涵盖所有相关的能源材料问题的广泛组合。该中心具有距离很近的强大优势，并汇集了英格兰东北部邻近大学的专业知识。重要的是，这将加强知识交流和合作，增加中心取得成功的可能性。无论是在英国国内还是在欧洲，它对额外资金的吸引力都很大。

A wealth of world-leading international research is aimed at addressing the global challenges of energy (both generation and storage), climate-change and the problems associated with finding sustainable methods to meet our increasing energy demands. Much of this effort focuses on making existing technology more robust, efficient and cheaper or discovering new methods to convert, store and transmit renewable energy. For engineers, chemists, biologists and physicists working within the confines of their own research fields, it is impossible to recognise all of the key problems for given energy system.These problems present on an extremely broad range of length scales (nm-m) and consequently calls for significantly more collaboration between the physical science and engineering to transmit the success of new materials discovery and understanding of the behaviour of these new materials to achieve durable, efficient, sustainable and manufacturable energy systems.The North East Centre for Energy Materials (NECEM), formed between the universities of Newcastle, Durham and Northumbria, seeks to unite the broad range of expertise present at the three sites to tackle a grand challenge of energymaterials and will make it possible to cooperate widely with local, national and international industry. The main focus of NECEM will be to address one of the most fundamentally critical elements of all energy systems, namely the interfaces between the materials within it and their interaction with the environment in which they operate. NECEM aims to be a world-leading programme on the understanding and manipulation of such interfaces in energy materials. The vision is to identify, exploring our unique blend of materials discovery, analysis techniques and energy applications new approaches operating over the full range of length scales (nm-m) that overcome existing limitations, such as corrosion, charge trapping, marine fouling. By addressing previously unexplored directions NECEM has the ability to provide an urgently needed step change in the science and engineering of materials that use, generate and store energy more efficiently.The assets of NECEM include the breadth of expertise within marine energy (tidal and wave energy), solar (photovoltaic and solar fuels by photo-electrochemistry), fuel cells (hydrogen and alcohol based, also enzymatic and microbial), energy storage (Li-Ion, redox-flow batteries), biomass (gasification, fermentation and direct conversion to heat or even electricity) and local smart grid structure (with concurrent production and consumption of renewable energy). We invite the Energy Materials community to engage with our centre to access this expertise and our unique blend of surface processing and characterization techniques distributed across the three sites. Probing and manipulating processes occurring at surfaces and interfaces is exceptionally complex but by combining our state-of-the-art facilities, which are ideal for this challenge, and our expertise in modelling behaviour in materials to compete systems, we can drive the development of new durable, efficient and sustainable energy solutions. We are geared towards cooperation with other centres in the UK in order to be able to cover a broad portfolio of all relevant energy material problems. This centre has the strong advantage of close proximity and brings together expertise from neighboring universities in the North East of England. Importantly this will enhance knowledge exchange and collaboration increasing the probability of success of the centre. It is also very attractive for additional funding both within the UK and in Europe.