In the House Group, we are working to develop new energy materials that will help in the effort to fight the climate crisis and achieve Net Zero. Finding efficient, low cost, and sustainable ways to store energy is critical to enabling the transition away from petrol and diesel vehicles and to ensuring a reliable supply of renewable electricity from our grid. This is a major scientific challenge requiring the discovery of new functional materials and a deeper fundamental understanding of energy conversion and storage mechanisms.
We are focused on materials for next generation Li-ion rechargeable batteries and future technologies that do not rely on Li. To increase the energy density of these systems, new cathodes are needed with larger charge storage capacity and greater structural stability. To achieve this, we exploit novel synthesis methods, target unique combinations of composition and structure, and apply the latest characterisation techniques to gain new insight into how they behave in the battery.
The group is based in the Centre for Energy Materials Research in the Department of Materials with close links to the Faraday Institution and Henry Royce Institute for advanced materials. The laboratories are equipped with comprehensive capabilities for the study of energy materials including battery cell fabrication, electrochemical testing, and materials characterisation all under inert atmosphere. We regularly make use of national synchrotron and neutron facitilies around the world and have extensive experience running in situ and operando experiments across a range of techniques.
