Hannah Kerr, Deputy Editor – Page 2 – Journal of Materials Chemistry Blog

Author Archive

Repair and re-use of the outer casing for a Lithium-ion battery cell

19 Aug 2022

An infographic describing a new method to repair and recycle a Li-ion battery pouch

Benign solvents for recycling and re-use of a multi-layer battery pouch
Jean E. Marshall, Bethany Middleton, Dominika Gastol, Roberto Sommerville, Con R. McElroy, Emma Kendrick and Vannessa Goodship
Mater. Adv., 2022, 3, 4973-4981, DOI: 10.1039/D2MA00239F

Meet the authors

	Dr. Jean Marshall gained her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2008, for investigating surface-initiated polymer chemistry. Her subsequent research work includes postdoctoral work on stimulus-responsive polymeric materials, as well as industrial experience in novel polymers for ink formulations. Since joining the Warwick Manufacturing Group (University of Warwick) in 2019, she has worked on several projects, covering diverse areas including tailored polymers for use in Lithium-ion batteries, polymeric materials as part of a circular economy, and recycling of battery components.
	Dominika Gastol joined University of Birmingham in 2019 and has been involved in recycling of Li-ion batteries from EV since then. Her research activities cover development of material recycling streams combined with remanufacturing, automated methods of electrode deposition and advanced microscopic characterisation.
	Rob gained a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the university of Birmingham in 2017, where he worked on producing synthetic zeolites from fly ash. Rob worked at the University of Warwick for a year on Lithium-ion battery recycling under Professor Emma Kendrick, before returning to Birmingham to join the ReLiB project in 2018. Rob Sommerville is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with a focus on reutilisation of waste and the circular economy of Lithium Ion Batteries. He is currently a Faraday Institution Research Fellow working on the ReLiB (Recycling and Reuse of Lithium Ion Batteries) project funded by the Faraday Institution, looking at physical separation techniques in the recycling of lithium-ion batteries.
	Dr Rob McElroy gained his Ph.D in 2007 at Keele University working on the production of composite materials from copolymers incorporating renewable resources. In 2009 he joined Prof. Pietro Tundo’s Carbonate Chemistry Group at Ca Foscari University of Venice looking into applications of dialkyl carbonates. He joined the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence, University of York as a PDRA in 2011 and has worked on a variety of projects including extraction and separation in supercritical CO2, greening of pharmaceutical chemistry, production of bio-derived polymers, production of bio-derived surfactants, running an industry facing club focusing on circular economy related research called RenewChem, development of new green solvents and solvent applications. His current role is looking at green solvents in electrode formulation and as deputy director of the Circa Renewable Chemistry Institute.
	Following 14 years working in industry as a plastic engineer, Dr. Vannessa Goodship joined WMG, University of Warwick in 1997. She gained a PhD in 2002 on multi-material injection moulding and has continued working across multiple sectors on polymer related topics at the academic and industry interface.
	Prof Emma Kendrick is Professor of Energy Materials, lead of the Energy Materials Group (EMG) in the School of Metallurgy and Materials and co-director of the Centre for Energy Storage (BCES) at the University of Birmingham (UoB). Her research focus is upon sustainable energy storage technologies, the objective to understand the science and engineering principles which underpin manufacturing and lifetime. Before UoB, she spent two years as Reader in WMG, University of Warwick, and before academia, she led innovations in the battery industry. Latterly as Chief Technologist in Energy Storage at SHARP Laboratories of Europe Ltd (SLE) and prior to that for two highly innovative lithium-ion battery SMEs, Fife Batteries Ltd and Surion Energy Ltd. She completed her PhD in Ceramics at Ceram Research and Keele University, MSc in New Materials at University of Aberdeen, and BSC in chemistry from the University of Manchester.

An interview with Dr. Jean Marshall:

a) What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

I am currently gaining a lot of new knowledge about how lithium-ion batteries work and how complex they are as chemical systems. The electrochemistry of batteries is not necessarily an obvious area for a polymer chemist, but batteries are enormously complicated and there is a lot of scope for experimenting with novel materials in this area. The most difficult challenge here is deciding which research question to tackle first!

b) How do you feel about Materials Advances as a place to publish research on this topic?

Materials Advances is an excellent ‘home’ for our work. Open access publishing is great for us as academics and publishing with an RSC journal lends articles good credibility.

c) Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Some researchers prefer to have laser-focus on one niche subject, and that’s definitely the approach that’s encouraged for gaining a PhD. However, in my ‘postdoctoral life’ I’ve definitely found that the most productive projects are really collaborative. So, my advice is to collaborate with as many people as possible, and make sure that they aren’t all in your direct field of research. The more people you talk to, the more you can bounce ideas around, and you’ll find yourself with far more new avenues to explore.

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Call for Papers: Advanced Functional Materials and Manufacturing Processes

07 Jul 2022

Guest Editors: Jessica O. Winter (The Ohio State University), Jawwad Darr (University College London), John Wang (National University Singapore)

Advanced Functional Materials (AFMs): especially nanomaterials, play an important role in catalysis, optoelectronic and quantum materials, biomaterials, and energy harvesting, storage, and conversion materials. AFMs can be designed, synthesized, (or modelled) to possess different (nano)particle/cluster attributes, such as bulk and/or defect structures and surface properties. AFMs can be further consolidated into larger hierarchical arrangements, using additive manufacturing or electrospinning for example, with nano-/micro-structure or surface characteristics that impart new functionality.

Materials Processes: Research involving discovering and translating AFMs from the bench to commercial products can be challenging. Discovery synthesis approaches for new AFMs require materials to be made faster and consistently, so that properties can be compared within compositional space. Thereafter, during scale up, replicating properties can pose a number of challenges. Scale-up can result in inhomogeneous mixing and uneven mass and heat gradients that influence material function. Structure-property relationships can strongly depend on manufacturing method (e.g., thermodynamic vs. kinetic limitations). Consequently, there is a need to better understand the relationship between materials synthesis and consolidation parameters at different scales in order to maintain desired functional properties.

This themed issue aims to explore the latest developments in advanced inorganic functional materials (synthesis, modelling and simulation), novel manufacturing processes including scale up approaches, and property evaluation and optimization. Suggested contributions that address, but are not restricted to, the following topics are welcome:

Advanced Materials

Ceramics, metal oxides, nanoparticles, metal organic frameworks, zeolites
Combinatorial, structure-property relationships, theory and simulation
Catalysts, quantum materials, biomaterials, and energy materials

Materials Processes

Batch vs. flow, green synthesis/manufacturing, process control and optimization
Hydrothermal/solvothermal, flame, plasma, electrospinning, precipitation methods, etc.
Process intensification / scale up
Controlled heat treatments/sintering
Additive manufacturing/3D printing

If you are interested in contributing to this collection please get in touch with the Editorial Office by email.

Please add a “note to the editor” in the submission form when you submit your manuscript to say that this is a submission for the themed collection. The Editorial Office and Guest Editors reserve the right to check suitability of submissions in relation to the scope of the collection and inclusion of accepted articles in the collection is not guaranteed. All manuscripts will be subject to the journal’s usual peer review process. Accepted manuscripts will be added to the collection as soon as they are online, and they will be published in a regular issue of Materials Advances.

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Low processing temperature for phosphate glass composites

14 Jun 2022

An infographic highlighting a new hydrated phosphate glass composite

Novel optical amorphous phosphate materials with a low melting temperature
Simon Kaser, Théo Guérineau, Clément Strutynski, Reda Zaki, Marc Dussauze, Etienne Durand, Sandra H. Messaddeq, Sylvain Danto, Younès Messaddeq and Thierry Cardinal
Mater. Adv., 2022, 3, 4600-4607, DOI: 10.1039/D1MA00995H

Meet the authors

Simon Kaser obtained a Materials Engineer degree in 2018 from INP-ENSIACET (Toulouse, France). He has been a PhD student since 2018, between Université de Bordeaux (Bordeaux, France) & Université Laval (Québec, Canada), with research focusing on 3D printing of phosphate glasses by Fused Deposition Modeling and the development of low-Tg phosphate glasses for this purpose.

(a) What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

I like the fact that my research focuses on relatively unexplored but rapidly expanding fields, such as glass 3D-printing. Not having much information on the subject from the literature and not knowing what is worth pursuing or not can be frustrating, but the satisfaction that comes from finally finding results makes all these efforts worthwhile.

b. Why did you choose Materials Advances as a place to publish research on this topic?

It feels important to me that any research work is available to the broadest audience, which is possible thanks to Open Access journals such as Materials Advances.

c. Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Do not be afraid to ask for help from senior researchers, their expertise and experience can only be beneficial to your own work.

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2D C2h group III monochalcogenides with direct bandgaps and highly anisotropic carrier mobilities

17 May 2022

An infographic highlighting the prediction of 2D group III monochalcogenides for future high efficiency solar cells and optoelectronics

Prediction of new phase 2D C2h group III monochalcogenides with direct bandgaps and highly anisotropic carrier mobilities
Tuo Hu, Congsheng Xu, Ao Zhang and Peiyuan Yu
Mater. Adv., 2022, 3, 2213-2221, DOI: 10.1039/D1MA01068A

Meet the authors

	Tuo Hu was a visiting student in Prof. Peiyuan Yu’s group at the Department of Chemistry at Southern University of Science and Technology from 2020 to 2021 where he worked on polymorphism of 2D semiconductors via DFT computation. He is currently a fourth-year undergraduate at University of California, Los Angeles majoring in Chemistry and Materials Science.
	Congsheng Xu received his master’s degree from Xiangtan University where his research focused on electronic properties of multilayer GeSe and its heterojunctions. Currently, he is a doctoral student in Prof. Peiyuan Yu’s research group at Southern University of Science and Technology. His main research direction is prediction of molecular structures and calculation of electronic properties of two-dimensional materials by machine learning.
	Ao Zhang received his Ph.D. in physics from Hunan Normal University in 2021. He is currently a postdoctoral at the Department of Physics in Southern University of Science and Technology. His research interests are on novel physical properties induced by spin-orbit coupling, topological semimetals, and multiferroic materials.
	Peiyuan Yu obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry from University of California, Los Angeles in 2017 and was a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 2017 to 2019. He began his independent career as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in 2019. Peiyuan’s research program uses computational chemistry to study a wide range of phenomena in chemistry and materials science, with a focus in understanding the reaction mechanisms and origins of selectivity of organic reactions.

(a) What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

In this work, we are most excited to discover that some novel polymorphs of two-dimensional materials give rise to very interesting and exotic electronic properties. For example, the new C_2h polymorph of 2D group III monochalcogenides features a direct bandgap which has not been found in other known single-layer phases. However, conventional computational methods to predict or design novel polymorphs are often limited by large computational costs. Therefore, we investigated the use of deep learning methods based on generative adversarial neural networks to quickly and comprehensively discover different phases of two-dimensional materials. This project requires knowledge and specialties from diverse disciplines such as computational chemistry, materials science, and physics. Besides, the rapid development of new computational techniques constantly motivates us to try to apply new technologies, which is quite challenging and intriguing.

(b) How do you feel about Materials Advances as a place to publish research on this topic?

Materials Advances is designated for interdisciplinary research and insights in the field of materials research, and our work is a combination of computer science and materials science, so I think it is a perfect match for this work to be published on Materials Advances. The professional editorial team and expert reviewers made the publishing process highly efficient.

For undergraduate students who are interested in scientific research, I would like to encourage them to actively participate and collaborate with graduate students and postdocs in research projects as early as possible and don’t be shy to share their hypotheses or insights.

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Call for papers: Themed collection on Materials Informatics

12 May 2022

Guest Editors: Chris Pickard (University of Cambridge, UK), Jörg Behler (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany), and Krishna Rajan (University at Buffalo, USA)

In this themed collection, we invite contributions in materials informatics. Manuscripts are encouraged in topics ranging from novel computational and experimental methods to state-of-the-art applications.

The discipline of Materials Informatics has emerged from a fusion of increasing availability of materials data, high throughput experimental and computational methods, first principles and other advanced materials models, and machine learning. It has been fuelled by the dramatic growth in available computational power, and its ubiquity.

If you are interested in contributing to this collection please get in touch with the Editorial Office by email.

Please add a “note to the editor” in the submission form when you submit your manuscript to say that this is a submission for the themed collection. The Editorial Office and Guest Editors reserve the right to check suitability of submissions in relation to the scope of the collection and inclusion of accepted articles in the collection is not guaranteed. All manuscripts will be subject to the journal’s usual peer review process. Accepted manuscripts will be added to the online collection as soon as they are online, and they will be published in a regular issue of Materials Advances.

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Call for papers: Themed collection on Biomass Materials

12 May 2022

Guest Editors: Meisha Shofner (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Andy Tennyson (Clemson University)

In this themed collection, we will collect primary research and review articles from across the area of biomass materials. Manuscripts are encouraged from a broad range of topics related to biomass materials including synthesis/processing, biological-synthetic interfaces, characterization, properties, degradation and end-of-life, lifecycle/economic analysis, and application studies.

Biomass was used by humans to formulate some of the earliest polymers, and contemporary environmental concerns have served as the impetus for the researchers and industry to return to biomass as precursors for engineered materials. Biomass materials are now poised to re-emerge as materials of construction across a range of applications that currently employ synthetic plastics and materials. In adapting biological compounds and materials for use in synthetic systems, the desired biological compound or material of interest is almost always found in extremely complex mixtures of structurally- and functionally-diverse molecules and macromolecules which are impossible to separate. Furthermore, completely removing all water from many biological compounds and materials causes them to lose the desired structure, property, or function of interest. To address these challenges and facilitate this shift in materials usage, interdisciplinary research spanning fundamental understanding of synthesis and properties to translational studies for targeted applications is needed.

If you are interested in contributing to this collection please get in touch with the Editorial Office by email.

Please add a “note to the editor” in the submission form when you submit your manuscript to say that this is a submission for the themed collection. The Editorial Office and Guest Editors reserve the right to check suitability of submissions in relation to the scope of the collection and inclusion of accepted articles in the collection is not guaranteed. All manuscripts will be subject to the journal’s usual peer review process. Accepted manuscripts will be added to the online collection as soon as they are online, and they will be published in a regular issue of Materials Advances.

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Themed collection: Chiral Nanomaterials

28 Apr 2022

We invite you to read a new themed collection in Materials Advances on chiral nanomaterials.

We are pleased to inform you that this new themed issue has now been published online.

Read the collection

Guest Edited by Nicholas A. Kotov (University of Michigan, USA), Luis M. Liz-Marzán (CIC biomaGUNE, Spain), and Qiangbin Wang (SINANO, China).

Chiral nanostructures is one of the most rapidly developing research fields encompassing chemistry, physics, and biology. The rise to academic prominence of chiral nanostructures was fuelled by their giant optical activity and the fundamental structural parallels between biotic and abiotic structures with mirror asymmetry. This themed collection provides a snapshot of concepts being developed by a diverse spectrum of scientists around the world working in chiral nanostructures from metals, semiconductors and ceramics. Many fundamental discoveries in this area are expected that are likely to encompass multiscale chirality transfer, chiral surfaces, biological signalling, and circularly polarized emitters. Technological applications being pursued along the way of fundamental studies include biosensing, healthcare, chiral photonics, and sustainable catalysis.

Articles in the collection are published in Materials Advances and they are all freely accessible with open access. A small selection of articles from the collection are provided below.

(more…)

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New collection: Advances in Energy Materials

28 Apr 2022

We are delighted to share with you a new collection of articles highlighting some of the most popular recent articles published in Materials Advances on energy materials. Containing both reviews and original research, the collection includes work on batteries, device fabrication, supercapacitors, and more.

Read the collection here

Below is a snapshot of some of the papers in the collection. We hope you enjoy reading these gold open access articles.

Review

Direct ink writing of energy materials, Tagliaferri, A. Panagiotopoulos and C. Mattevi, Mater. Adv., 2021, 2, 540-563 DOI: 10.1039/D0MA00753F

Communication

Realizing poly(ethylene oxide) as a polymer for solid electrolytes in high voltage lithium batteries via simple modification of the cell setup, Lukas Stolz, Gerrit Homann, Martin Winter and Johannes Kasnatscheew, Mater. Adv., 2021, 2, 3251-3256 DOI: 10.1039/D1MA00009H

Paper

Influence of La³⁺ induced defects on MnO₂–carbon nanotube hybrid electrodes for supercapacitors, Nilanjan Chakrabarty, Monalisa Char, Satheesh Krishnamurthy and Amit K. Chakraborty, Mater. Adv., 2021, 2, 366-375 DOI: 10.1039/D0MA00696C

Visit our website – rsc.li/materials-advances

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Congratulations to prize winners from NGSE 2017

14 Dec 2017

We are delighted to congratulate the poster prize winners from 4th International Congress on Next Generation Solar Energy, which took place 4 – 7 December 2017 in Cali, Columbia.

The meeting was a great success and discussed recent developments in advanced photovoltaics including special sessions on perovskites, organics and hybrids. The applied aspects of photovoltaics and renewable energies were specifically addressed by an industry day, and the direct social impact of using solar cells in order to enhance the life of Wayúu community in Guajira Colombia was discussed.

Congratulations to…

Juan David Villada, Universidad del Valle (Colombia)

Juanita Hidalgo, Universidad de los Andes (Colombia)

Juana Marlene Pinanjota, Escuela Politécnica Nacional (Ecuador)

Poster prizes were sponsored by Materials Horizons, Journal of Materials Chemistry A and Journal of Materials Chemistry C. All posters were judged by Professor Nazario Martin (Editor-in-Chief JMC A), Professor Wolfgang Tress (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), and Dr Juan Pablo Correa (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) before being awarded by Dr Walter Torres (Universidad del Valle).

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Congratulations to our Highly Cited materials chemistry community!

27 Nov 2017

We are delighted to have many world-leading materials science researchers in our community, helping to guide Journal of Materials Chemistry A-C as high impact journals publishing properties and synthesis of exciting new materials.

Many have been recognized in Clarivate Analytics’ recently published 2017 Highly Cited Researchers list!

Congratulations from the Journal of Materials Chemistry team to…

…Editorial Board members

Journal of Materials Chemistry A
- Mohamed Eddaoudi, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia
- Yusuke Yamauchi, University of Wollongong, Australia
Journal of Materials Chemistry B
- Xiaogang Qu, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Journal of Materials Chemistry C
- Wai-Yeung Wong, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
- Yadong Yin, University of California, Riverside, USA
- Xiaowei Zhan, Peking University, China

…and Advisory Board members

Journal of Materials Chemistry A
- Xinliang Feng, Dresden University of Technology, Germany
- Jiaxing Huang, Northwestern University, USA
- Linda Nazar, University of Waterloo, Canada
Journal of Materials Chemistry B
- Chunhai Fan, Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
- Luis Liz-Marzán, CIC biomaGUNE, Spain
Journal of Materials Chemistry C
- Manish Chhowalla, Rutgers – The State University of New Jersey, USA
- Mercouri Kanatzidis, Northwestern University, USA
- Junji Kido, Yamagata University, Japan

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Journal of Materials Chemistry Blog

Author Archive

Repair and re-use of the outer casing for a Lithium-ion battery cell

An infographic describing a new method to repair and recycle a Li-ion battery pouch

Meet the authors

Call for Papers: Advanced Functional Materials and Manufacturing Processes

Guest Editors: Jessica O. Winter (The Ohio State University), Jawwad Darr (University College London), John Wang (National University Singapore)

Advanced Materials

Materials Processes

If you are interested in contributing to this collection please get in touch with the Editorial Office by email.

Low processing temperature for phosphate glass composites

An infographic highlighting a new hydrated phosphate glass composite

Meet the authors

2D C2h group III monochalcogenides with direct bandgaps and highly anisotropic carrier mobilities

An infographic highlighting the prediction of 2D group III monochalcogenides for future high efficiency solar cells and optoelectronics

Meet the authors

Call for papers: Themed collection on Materials Informatics

Guest Editors: Chris Pickard (University of Cambridge, UK), Jörg Behler (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany), and Krishna Rajan (University at Buffalo, USA)

If you are interested in contributing to this collection please get in touch with the Editorial Office by email.

Call for papers: Themed collection on Biomass Materials

Guest Editors: Meisha Shofner (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Andy Tennyson (Clemson University)

If you are interested in contributing to this collection please get in touch with the Editorial Office by email.

Themed collection: Chiral Nanomaterials

Read the collection

New collection: Advances in Energy Materials

Read the collection here

Review

Communication

Paper

Congratulations to prize winners from NGSE 2017

Congratulations to our Highly Cited materials chemistry community!

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