MSCA-DN.25.Akhmatskaya

Objective:

The climate targets set by the EU with the goal of climate neutrality by 2050 require a transformation of all sectors of the economy towards the use of renewables-based electricity, calling for joined forces between EU countries in order to achieve a more resilient energy system. To bring us closer to the realisation of these ambitious goals, 12 academic and 6 industrial partners from 9 countries formed an international, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral team — e-ChemIn. We are united by the idea of applying a new paradigm in designing energy devices, which shifts the current approach of creating individual materials towards engineering electrochemically ACTIVE MATERIALS INTERFACES. Working together will enable us to: 1) design multiple sets of electrochemical interfaces using renewable, abundant, and circular materials and optimise them for new generations of energy conversion and storage devices. Our lab-scale prototypes will outperform characteristics of current benchmarks and will be ready for further developments at high TRLs (5-9); 2) develop multimodal approaches for the characterisation of interfaces operando at the nanoscale, providing unprecedented insights into interfaces in action and making the characterisation of active interfaces accessible to the broader scientific community; 3) successfully establish processes for the recovery of critical raw materials from end-of-life devices and apply them at the industrial scale; 4) to train 15 doctoral candidates in state-of-the-art electrochemical concepts and technologies through the paradigm of interface-driven materials design, providing them with interdisciplinary research knowledge, professional connections, communication and leadership skills, making them ready to face current and future challenges and to ensure the valorisation of knowledge and ideas to products and services for economic and social benefit following the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.