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DFG research unit “„Energy Landscapes and Structure in Ion Conducting Solids” (ELSICS)

On Dez 10th 2020, the German Science Foundation (DFG) has installed a new research unit (Forschungsgruppe), FOR 5065 with the title „Energy Landscapes and Structure in Ion Conducting Solids (ELSICS). The spokesperson is Prof. Karl-Michael Weitzel (Philipps Universität Marburg)

Summary of ELSICS:

The potential energy landscape of mobile ions in solid-state materials and the atomic scale structure are intimately interrelated. This interrelation and the resultant properties, e.g. the mobility of the ions, is of paramount interest in contemporary material science with direct applications in energy storage and conversion. Understanding the interplay of structure, energy landscape and ionic transport of ionic solids is of crucial importance for a knowledge based development of improved and new functionalities of these materials.

It is the aim of this initiative to quantify the energy distribution of ionic sites in solids on the basis of atomically resolved structures and in conjunction with ionic transport properties with a truly concerted effort of experimental and theoretical research groups. More specifically, amorphous solids and crystals with well-defined defects as well as polycrystalline systems or bi-crystals with grain-boundary dominated ionic transport shall be investigated. The focus will be on two different classes of materials where ionic mobility is of tantamount importance. The first class is alkali ion based materials with relevance for energy storage. The second class is perovskitic materials relevant for fuel cells.

The joint effort will involve state-of-the-art expertise from diverse experiments [charge attachment induced transport (CAIT), solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), atom probe tomography (APT) and analytical and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM)], as well as dedicated solid-state matter theory for crystalline and amorphous materials. As a result of this initiative, we expect to be able to provide a unifying picture with predictive character of the interrelation between energy landscape, structure and ion transport in solid-state materials.