Southampton Electrochemistry Conference 2015 Event

9:30 Coffee and Welcome

10:00 Andrew Hector (Southampton) – “Metal nitride negative electrode materials for sodium batteries”

Andrew Hector obtained a BSc in Chemistry from Imperial College, London and a PhD in Ivan Parkin’s group at University College London. He came to Southampton in 1995 to work as a postdoctoral research fellow first in complex fluorides and oxyfluorides, then in lithium battery cathode materials. In 2000 he took up a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to study precursor routes to new metal nitride compositions. He was appointed to a lectureship in 2008 and is currently an associate professor. His current interests span a range of materials synthesis, characterisation and electrochemistry topics.

11:00 Stefan Freunberger (Graz) – “Post Li-Ion Batteries: Materials and Mechanistic Aspects”

Stefan Freunberger is Assistant Professor at Graz University of Technology. He received his M.Sc. from Vienna University of Technology, his Ph.D. in chemistry from ETH Zürich and did postdoctoral work with Peter G. Bruce. His research interests embrace energy storage materials including for Li-ion and Li-O2 batteries, reaction mechanisms, electrolytes and in-situ techniques. His research has been recognized by the Srinivasan Young Investigator Award of The Electrochemical Society and the invited visiting professorship la Chaire Total de la Fondation Balard at the University of Montpellier. He received an ERC Starting Independent Researcher Grant of the European Commission in 2014.

Lunch

13:30 Jan Fransaer (KU Leuven) – “Electrodeposition of germanium from ionic liquids”

Prof. Jan Fransaer (Department of Materials Engineering) has a background in metallurgy and is a specialist in experimental and computational electrochemistry. His group has made significant contributions to the practical and theoretical understanding of the electrodeposition of particles together with metals, and was one of the first groups to study this process using non-aqueous electrolytes. This resulted a few years later in a collaboration with Prof. Binnemans on the use of ionic liquids for electrochemical applications, mainly focused on electrodeposition, but now extended to batteries. His research group is involved in the study of the electrochemistry of metal ions in ionic liquids and the electrodeposition of metals, alloys, semiconductors and MOFs. 

14:30 Denis Kramer (Southampton) – “Finally, Carbon-Free? Ideas and Challenges for Next Generation Low Temperature Oxygen Reduction Electro-Catalysts”

Denis Kramer’s research interests focus on electrochemical energy technologies such as fuel cells and batteries. He mainly works at the interface between theory and experiment to combine computational materials design (based on DFT) with advanced electrochemical techniques to discover technology-enabling materials. He worked at the Paul Scherrer Institut (Switzerland) applying neutron imaging to fuel cells, spend two years at MIT studying Li-Ion batteries based on DFT, and relocated to the UK in 2009 to study electrocatalysts for low temperature fuel cells at Imperial College London. He pursues his research interests at the University of Southampton since 2011.

15:30 James Frith (Southampton) – “Improvements to the Lithium-Oxygen Cell Through the Use of Homogeneous Catalysts”

James Frith completed his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry at the University of Southampton in 2011. He then started research into lithium-oxygen batteries, as part of his doctoral thesis, under the supervision of Professor John Owen and Dr Nuria Garcia-Araez. James now works as a senior research associate in the Garcia-Araez/Owen group.

16:00 End

All welcome to attend. Registration is not required.