UK project to study energy materials at atomic scale

Starting in May, the five-year Energy Materials: Computational Solutions project will be carried out by a research consortium led by Prof Saiful Islam at Bath University to work on new sustainable materials for energy storage and conversion.

Materials performance lies at the heart of the development of green energy technologies, and computational methods now play a vital role in modelling and predicting the atomic-scale properties of novel materials.

Prof Islam’s consortium team includes Prof Steve Parker and Dr Aron Walsh from Bath, and Profs Richard Catlow and Nora de Leeuw from University College London and Dr Paul Sherwood from the Daresbury Laboratory. The team also has links with industrial partners including Johnson Matthey and Sharp.

‘Developing new sustainable materials holds the key to cheaper and more efficient solar cells for homes and rechargeable batteries for electric cars, which will help reduce carbon emissions,’ Prof Islam said in a statement.