January 2021: Things are getting started at POLIMI :)

Since my coming on 01/03/2020, things have been slowed down a bit by the COVID situation, but my first PhD student, Jiajia Wang landed from China last week and she will start soon at POLIMI after the quarantine period. Besides, Prof. Jie Li started in 09/2020 thus our lab now has cathode (and anodes) synthesis skills.

Luckily the Germans are getting results in Muenster at HI MS – FZJ, despite the difficult working situation, so research never stopped although managed by zoom rather than regular visits as originally planned 😦

Last year, Niloofar Ehteshami graduated with magna cum laude and this year, Tong Zhang and Jaschar Atik should defend their theses at FZJ.

Some parts of the SPIDER EU project have been transferred to POLIMI and electrolyte development is now under the responsibility of POLIMI, with the maintaining of FZJ and the involvement of my colleagues Isidora and Peter at FZJ.

Stay tuned for the coming publications of Junli, Jan-Phillip, Jaschar and Julia 🙂

Leaving Helmholtz Institute Münster and Starting at Politecnico di Milano (as Prof. Assoc.)

After 5 years leading a ‘Young Investigator Group’ in Helmholtz Institute Münster and 10 years spent in Germany, between University of Münster/MEET, KIT/Helmholtz Institute Ulm and FZJ/HI MS, time has come to move on and I accepted an associate professor position in Milan, Italy starting this year.

I will not be the only transfer from Münster, since my wife, Jie Li will also join the new battery group at the Department of Energy at POLIMI with a similar position and the group will be completed by a full professor, Benedetto Bozzini as part of the Energy for Motion developement project.

This is exciting, research-wise since we all have complementary skills,  with a strong focus on methods (electrochemistry, large instruments) and Zn batteries for Benedetto, a backgroung more on material developement for alcaline, alcaline earth and A-ion and AE-ion batteries for Jie (cathodes) and myself (electrolytes, anodes..) that complement each others nicely. We will strat with a small laboratory in an existing building and will shortly move to a new building.

Teaching-wise, it will be all new for Jie and myself and since POLIMI is among the top engineering universities in the EU, I am looking forward to participating to the academic knowledge and culture of excellence there….and inversely, hoping to benefit from a stream of talented students willing to pursue research with me!

I will keep a foot at Helmholtz Institute Münster since my group (5 PhD students and one post-doc) will stay there and this site will continue covering their activities (as collaboration for me).

2018 ends…

2018 has been a eventful year for the group.

First of all, in 2018, we started publishing on ionomer work, with the proposition, in Nature Communications of a ‘Water-in-ionomer’ electrolyte, in collaboration with many laboratories and, internally, with the group of Dr. Jie Li .

Besides, a running collaboration with Dr. Cristina Iojoiu (LEPMI, CNRS, France) and Dr. Dominic Bresser (Helmholtz Institute Ulm, Germany), led to a publication on high performance low temperature, high voltage single-ion ionomeric nanophase separated polymer electrolyte in Energy and Environmental Science.

On the third party funding side, SPICY ended in July 2018, but 2 new EU projects have been funded for a total amount of 1.17 M euros and are starting in 2019.

SPIDER (call H2020 NMPB30) : Coordinated by CEA

VIDICAT (H2020 – FETopen): Coordinated by Univesity Carlos II  de Madrid

The group has been evaluated with a poster presentation for the students and a presentation by myself. Dr. Oleg Borodin was present as external reviewer, which was the occasion to discuss several topics of common interrest and find possible collaborations between experimental work at HI MS and modelling at the Army Research Laboratory.

Departures/Arrivals:

Tong Zhang left the group for Continental AG

Dr. Junli Shi went back to Ningbao institute in China

Jaschar Atik joined the group as a PhD student

Miaomiao Liang, from China is staying in the group as a sandwitch CSC student for one year

Ekin Esen, from Turkey, is staying as an Erasmus student for 6 months.

New students and post-docs will start working on the new projects…

One year update..

Since 03/2015,  the group has grown a bit.

First of all, the EU project SPICY (H2020) was finally transfered to HI MS and will supports 2 PhD students until 30/04/2018.

Another proposal was granted: BenchBatt (BMBF), which started on 01/01/2016 and which will last 3 years and support one more PhD student.

Finally, Dr. Shi, an experienced polymer scientist, was granted a CSC grant and will join the group in August 2016.

In August 2016, the group will include:

Dr. Junli Shi – Visiting scientist (edit: coming in October)

Msc. Tong Zhang – Doctorant

Msc. Niloofar Ehteshami – Doctorant

Msc. Mathias Drews – Doctorant

Msc. Seyedeh Sheida Hosseinioun – Doctorant

Opening of the blog ‘Polymer Electrolyte’

Welcome to the polymer electrolyte site!

This site was created in order to communicate on the research done within the Young research group ‘Polymer Electrolytes’ at Helmholtz Institute Muenster (HI-MS) -Forschungszentrum Jülich (IEK-12)

Led by myself – Elie Paillard – since 01/03/2015, this group has been funded for 3 to 5 years and is dedicated to Polymer Electrolytes development for Electrochemical Energy Storage Systems.

The Helmholtz Institute Muenster, led by Prof. Martin Winter is currently waiting for its own building and is thus hosted by the MEET Institute.