Materialwissenschaftler (m/w/d)

INM - Leibniz Institute for New Materials is located in Saarbrücken, Germany, and is an internationally leading center for materials research, a scientific partner to national and international research institutions, and a provider of research and development for companies throughout the world. The INM is an institute of the Leibniz Association and has about 250 employees. The Marie Sklodowska-Curie Doctoral Network “e-ChemIn: ElectroChemical Interfaces for energy conversion and storage: towards a carbon neutral society" is recruiting 15 Doctoral Candidates (DCs). The e-ChemIn network brings 12 academic and 6 industrial partners from 9 countries formed an international, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral team. 15 Doctoral candidates will enjoy a multi-disciplinary and international environment with plenty of training opportunities and exchange with all labs involved in the Network. MSCA-DN e-ChemIn - Doctoral Candidate (DC2): Characterization of solid-liquid and solid-solid electrochemical interfaces operando at the nanoscale (f/m/d) Scientific background The climate targets set by the EU with the goal of climate neutrality by 2050 require a transformation of all sectors of the economy towards the use of renewables-based electricity, calling for joined forces between EU countries in order to achieve a more resilient energy system. In the e-ChemIn we are united by the idea of applying a new paradigm in designing energy devices, which shifts the current approach of creating individual materials towards engineering electrochemically ACTIVE MATERIALS INTERFACES. Working together we will: 1) design multiple sets of electrochemical interfaces using renewable, abundant, and circular materials and optimize them for new generations of energy conversion and storage devices. Created lab-scale prototypes which outperform characteristics of current benchmarks and will be ready for further developments at high TRLs (5-9); 2) develop multimodal approaches for the characterization of interfaces operando at the nanoscale, providing unprecedented insights into interfaces in action and making the characterization of active interfaces accessible to the broader scientific community; 3) successfully establish processes for the recovery of critical raw materials from end-of-life devices and apply them at the industrial scale. The aim of the project is to reveal the nanoscale details of the ionic transport at electrode-electrolyte interfaces in operando focusing on the specific role of composite materials in improving sodium ion batteries (SIBs) and zinc ion batteries (ZIBs) performances. The Doctoral Candidate (DC) will design and test microbattery closed-cell setups based on MEMS chip technology and perform operando characterizations of solid-solid (S-S) and solid-liquid (S-L) interfaces using probe corrected scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) and related spectroscopy techniques. Processes at Na-ion carbonaceous anode and their composites for SIBs will be compared. Zn composite cathodes for ZIBs will be tested. Tight cooperation with DC1 and DC4, assisting with nanoscale characterisation of carbonaceous, composite covalent anode materials in SIBs, and multifunctional ion-conductive polymers in rechargeable aqueous ZIBs, is expected. Operando experiments will be compared with ex-situ TEM analysis of materials from coin cells at different states of charge to ensure comparability of the results. Chemical composition, electronic structure at S-L, S-S and S-S-L interfaces will be probed by EELS. Expected results (1) Successful assembly and nanoscale study of the S-L, S-S, S-S-L interfaces in microbattery devices. (2) Unveiling interface-performances relationships (e.g., composition-porosity-structure with SEI formation for SIBs, ZIBs used within the project). The selected candidate will be required to enroll in a PhD program at Saarland University. Supervisors - Benefits - Qualifications Main supervisor: Prof. Nadja Tarakina...