ERC Research Professor in Trinity College Dublin’s Schools of Chemistry and Physics, and principal investigator at AMBER, Valeria Nicolosi, has won a “Proof of Concept” grant from the European Research Council.
The €150,000 award is provided to help her bridge the gap between frontier nanotech research and the development of related, commercial applications.
Professor Nicolosi will use the grant for her project entitled ‘Ink-Jet printed supercapacitors based on 2D nanomaterials’. This project aims to enable new 2D-based nanomaterials to one day pioneer ultra-thin, flexible supercapacitors manufacturing for the aerospace and automotive industries.
Professor Nicolosi said: “At the moment there is huge societal need to move towards sustainable and renewable energy resources. As a result, we are seeing an increase in renewable energy production from sun and wind, as well as the development of electric vehicles or hybrid electric vehicles. Energy storage systems like batteries and super capacitors are starting to play a larger part in our lives. Unfortunately, accidents can occur due to the high corrosion, toxicity and flammability of the electrolytes used, coupled with the high instability of lithium under normal conditions. We expect the development of high-performing, ultra-thin, ultra-light, non-hazardous and chemically stable energy storage devices will have huge societal and economic impact in all these sectors.”
“The aim of this project is to determine the economic and technical feasibility of using readily scalable technologies for the development of inexpensive and high performance ultra-thin, flexible films of two dimensional nanosheets for supercapacitors manufacturing for the aerospace and automotive industry.”
“Through this funding, our hope is to be able to license this technology or to open a spin-out very soon. We are exploring both possibilities at present, as a direct result of the ERC funding.”
EU Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, Carlos Moedas, said: “Europe has plenty of world-class research, but not enough of it reaches the marketable product stage as commercialised, pioneering goods and services. The Proof of Concept grants will enable some of our top research to compete with the best innovations out there. This will help improve our ability to bring innovations to market, boost competitiveness and create the jobs and growth needed in Europe.”