Center on Nanostructuring for Efficient Energy Conversion (CNEEC)
No single technology will solve the impending energy crisis. Ultimately, a collection of different energy technologies must work in concert to efficiently and cleanly produce, store, and consume the 20 TW of power that humans around the globe will soon demand. Although there are many existing technologies for energy conversion devices, most cannot provide renewable or sustainable solutions at scale because they are either too inefficient or too expensive. It is thus critical to improve the efficiency of these devices.
Most fittingly, the overarching goal of CNEEC is to increase the efficiency of energy conversion devices by manipulating materials at the nanometer scale. This involves developing the fabrication and characterization methodologies to understand how nanostructuring can optimize transport, light absorption, and reaction kinetics and thermodynamics in materials. Based on these fundamental advances, we hope to demonstrate ways to improve the performance and efficiency of energy conversion devices such as photovoltaics, fuel cells, and batteries that rely on shared physical and chemical phenomena. Although the Center emphasizes fundamental research, we conduct our research with the motivation to improve efficiencies in energy conversion.
Generate new knowledge and advance the progress of research.
Deliver world-class, research-based education to students, and broad-based training to leaders in academia, industry, and society.
Facilitate technology transfer, applying people and ideas to improve our society and our world.
The Center is designed to make fundamental advances in cross-cutting scientific theme areas which are likely to lead to step-out improvements in device efficiencies. In particular, we rely on nanostructuring to generate each of these key physical properties:
- high gradients
- high surface-to-volume ratios
- low dimensionality
Our research exploits these properties to tune thermodynamic equilibria and kinetic properties, to vary photonic behavior through quantum confinement for efficient photon capture, and to reduce distances for charge transport. This involves learning how to manipulate sub-nanometer particles – namely electrons, photons, ions, atoms, and molecules – by tuning material properties through nanostructuring.
To achieve our goals, we organize our research activities under three themes, or Technical Research Groups (TRGs), namely,
- TRG1: Tuning Thermodynamics/Kinetics by Nanoscaling
- TRG2: Photon Management
- TRG3: Optimizing Charge Transport at Reduced Sizes and Dimensions
