Advanced Energy Materials
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Welcome to the Advanced Energy Materials and CVD Lab website at the University of Louisville. Our group's research focuses on the development of new processes based on chemical vapor deposition (CVD) for producing large single crystal quality wafers (Diamond and Gallium Nitride) and one-dimensional materials (nanowires and nanotubes) for a variety of inorganic materials.
Our group's research interests in advanced materials and nanomaterials can be broadly categorized as the following:
- Development of light-absorbers for energy conversion and storage
- Fundamental research on nucleation and growth mechanisms of crystals
- Large area single crystal quality film growth (Diamond and GaN)
- Process development for bulk production of 1-D nanomaterials
- Self-assembled processes for application-ready nanowire systems
- Unique product development efforts using nano-scale building blocks: Controlled Transdermal Drug Delivery Patch, Bio/Chemical Sensors, New Electrode Materials and Energy Conversion Devices.
Process and product development research requires extensive structural and optical characterization of the materials and their surfaces. Therefore, our group maintains a large number of multi-user facilities in addition to a lab dedicated to CVD equipment necessary for advanced materials and nanotechnology research. The group consists of high school, undergraduate, M.Eng./M.S., and Ph.D. students as well as post-doctoral research associates and scientists.
The students graduating from this group undertake courses from a variety of disciplines such as: Materials for Renewable Energy Challenges, Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), MEMS, Materials Characterization, Computational ChE/Materials Science, Solid State Physics/Physical Electronics, and Electrochemistry & Surface Science in addition to core chemical engineering courses to suit the multi-disciplinary nature of the materials nanotechnology research.
A discovery of a material can change the way we convert energy, store and use it globally.
Our Objectives
- Materials genome project - Develop rapid synthesis techniques for accelerated discovery of electrocatalysts and battery materials. Initiate a materials database for accelerated materials discovery using informatics driven modeling & combinatorial synthesis methods for semiconductors and electrocatalysts
- Materials - New III-V alloy semiconductors and complex metal oxide alloys
- Processes - Scalable production of nanowire based materials; large single crystal growth, rapid synthesis of complex oxides
- Establish in-situ microscopy and spectroscopy tools for fundamental studies on understanding of interface stability & durability in functional energy devices
- Materials genome project - Discover number of semiconductors and electrocatalysts made using earth abundant elements; test algorithms for prediction of structure-functionality behavior
- Materials - Demonstrate performance of new III-V alloys and complex oxides in functional solar conversion devices and catalytic reactors
- Processes - large area growth of bulk III-V nitrides and III-V on Si substrate; scale up production of complex oxides
- Demonstrate plasma catalysis concept with ammonia production
- In-situ studies including visualization and quantifications on durability estimation
- Materials genome project – Database and complete set of analytics
- Establish durability of materials and interfaces within energy/power devices
- Complete translation of several concepts to commercial space
- Scale up and demonstrate plasma catalysis based reactors
- Develop and translate fundamental understanding on durability