University of St Andrews

Role:

1. Develop new strategies to manipulate defect chemistry to control electrical and electrochemical properties of materials and their interfaces.

2. The development of supported electrodes for high scale manufacture of fuel cells and batteries.

For Further information please contact the Principal Investigator, Professor John T S Irvine [email protected]

Principal Investigator

Professor John T S Irvine FRSE, FRSC  is well recognised for world-leading activity in energy materials, fuel cell and energy conversion technologies. He has 400 refereed publications (h-index of 54), has trained 50 PhD students and was awarded the RSC Sustainable Energy Award in 2015, previously being awarded RSC Materials Chemistry (‘09), Bacon (‘03) and Beilby (‘99) awards/medals. He has published 10 high level Nature publications and was re-elected European Councillor of the International Society for Solid State Ionics in 2015. He has led two EU research training networks, 1 ESF programme and 1 EU project. He led the Scottish Hydrogen and Fuel Association for 6 years to 2013 and is co-Director of the Energy Technology Partnership. He has led 3 EPSRC platform grants, led the Delivery of Sustainable Hydrogen Supergen and is Co-director of the current Supergen Hydrogen and Fuel Cell hub. He was an EPSRC Senior Fellow 2006-11, is PI or CoI on 10 current EPSRC related grants including the St Andrews Advanced Materials Capital for Great Technologies award. There is also very significant Industry, EU and government funding with a total overall current portfolio of around £11M. His research interests include solid state ionics, new materials, ceramic processing, electronic conductors, superconductors, electrochemistry, photoelectrochemistry, fuel cell technology, hydrogen, electrochemical conversion and heterogeneous catalysis.

Co-Investigators

Dr. Paul Connor is a Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer in the School of Chemistry at St Andrews. His work focuses on the physical aspects and bridging engineering of SOFC, reversible fuel cell and electrolyser technology. This work has generated over 20 refereed papers and two patents. He is a co-founder of St Andrews Fuel Cells Ltd. He has been working on Fuel Cells since 2001, after finishing a 3 year fellowship researching negative electrodes for rechargeable lithium ion batteries, also at St Andrews. His PhD was awarded in 1998 from the University of Otago (New Zealand) for studies of the metal oxide-water interface relating to photoelectrochemical systems.

Dr Cristian-Daniel Savaniu, MRSC  is a Senior Research Fellow currently engaged in research on advanced energy materials and processing techniques, with applications in catalysis and electrochemical devices such as fuel cells. His work focuses on preparation of specific materials using low temperature solution methods, deposition of thin films of proton and ionic conducting electrolytes and development of ceramic SOFC anodes. He has a keen interest in understanding the solid-solid, gas-solid and liquid-solid interactions occurring at the interface of perovskite materials, with the scope of favourably tailoring their properties. He has 30 refereed papers (h-index 14), including one in Nature and co-authored two patents. He has been a PI and Co-I on several EPSRC projects.

Research Fellows

Dr Jin-Goo Lee PhD degree and initial post-doctoral studies at Yonsei University in Korea. PhD & post-doctoral studies focused on the performance enhancement in low-temperature solid oxide fuel cells and development of new cathode materials for metal-air batteries. Since Joining the JTSI group Jin-Goo has been working on metal-exsolved perovskite materials that will be analyzed on their electrochemical activities in acidic & alkaline media for low-temperature electrochemical applications such as proton-exchange membrane fuel cells, alkaline fuel cells, or metal-air batteries.