Materialwissenschaftler (m/w/d)

INM - Leibniz Institute for New Materials is located in Saarbrücken, Saarland, 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. 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. You will develop operando scanning TEM (STEM) and EELS approaches to characterize adsorption phenomena and the formation of the electric double layer with the highest spatial resolutions reported. You will use room-temperature ionic liquids (ILs) as electrolytes and test their (1) structuring in nanoconfined environments of different dimensionality (e.g., inside carbon nanotubes, 3D porous carbons), (2) behavior under applied bias in confinement. Spatially resolved data from STEM and EELS will be correlated with volumetric measurements from NMR and operando XPS, enabling direct observation, and quantification of charge storage mechanisms in electrode materials and processes of electrolyte degradation. In cooperation with DC5, who performs complementary atomistic simulations, you will work towards obtaining a comprehensive insights in the structure and dynamics at S-L interfaces at different states of charge. Expected results: (1) Deep understanding of electrolyte behavior in nanometer confinements. (2) Design of a correlative setup (EELS, XPS) to study the electronic structure of interfaces. The selected candidate will be required to enroll in a PhD program at Saarland University. Supervisors - Benefits - Qualifications: Main supervisor: Prof. Nadja Tarakina (INM, https://www.leibniz-inm.de/en/innovative-elektronenmikroskopie/ ) Co-supervisor: Prof. R. Mom (ULEI, https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/rik-mom/publications#tab-2 ) Co-supervisors from secondments: Dr. N. Krans (Protochips, https://www.protochips.com/ ), Prof. Dr. P. Yushmanov (P&L Scientific, https://plscientific.se/ ) You will study interactions between IL and carbon anodes under biasing conditions in an NMR cell at P&L (5 months); as well as design the correlati...