Dr Raj Pandya, Department of Chemistry, has won a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting GrantLink opens in a new window to throw light on the microscopic, ultrafast processes that take place in battery materials.

An award of €1.8 million will fund his project ‘FemtoCharge: Probing and controlling ultrafast electron and ion dynamics in operating battery electrodes and interfaces’.

Dr Pandya said,

“I’m extremely grateful to receive this ERC award to launch this ambitious project. The funding will help my team, and I design, build and apply new ultrafast optical tools complementing the excellent facilities here at Warwick.”

The way (electrical or ionic) charges move is crucial to how devices like batteries work, influencing everything from how fast they charge to how much energy they can store. It is our advances in the scientific understanding of charge dynamics over the last fifty years that have led to the current generation of energy storage technologies. But while we have a solid appreciation of how charges in batteries behave over longer, nanoseconds to second timescales, for extremely fast reactions (happening on femtosecond and faster timescales) and at tiny, nanoscale interfaces, our knowledge is still limited. This lack of understanding is a big challenge because these miniscule processes may play key roles in battery performance.

Dr Pandya said,

“Understanding and controlling how electrons and ions behave on extremely fast timescales, in batteries (and other electrochemical energy systems), is a key scientific goal. However, our current ultrafast tools which are mostly geared to looking at photoactive molecular and semiconductor systems limit our ability to explore these processes in systems like batteries. My project combines advanced methods from ultrafast laser spectroscopy, materials chemistry, and battery electrochemistry to address this.”

The new tools and knowledge developed through this project will have broad scientific appeal, potentially leading to new theories and advancements in our understanding of basic reactions in physical chemistry. Indeed, the charge-transfer processes Dr Pandya’s team will study are relevant not just to batteries but to many other key devices and technologies that are important in achieving Net Zero such as water-splitting catalysts, thermoelectric generators, and memristor technologies.

Find out more about Dr Pandya’s research

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