Author: Ana Belen Jorge Sobrido

The group had a fantastic time at the Festival of Communities, held at QMUL Mile End Campus on the 12th June 2022. Our stand ReCharge showcased the world of batteries and how to use sustainable resources to produce sustainable devices. People attending were able to light an LED building a lemon battery, also understand a bit about what a redox flow battery is. We showed how candyfloss is somewhat similar to the process we use to produce our fibres from biomass that will then become electrodes for batteries! The little ones had lots of fun with the giant jenga we built following the paper by E. Driscoll from Birmingham. It was a great success!

Thanks Hattie, Eneith, Pavel, Szymon, Michael, Jesus and Mauricio for all your efforts in making it possible!

We welcome Mauricio to the group! Mauricio received his PhD from University of York a few weeks back and joins the group as a PDRA as part of my Future Leaders Fellowship on Sustainable Electrode Materials for Redox Flow Batteries. He will be working with us for the next 3 years developing new understanding on effective design of biomass-derived materials for their application as electrodes in energy storage, in particular flow batteries. More about Mauricio here.

Amazing weather last Friday 20th May 2022! Great for our group hike around the Chess Valley. We managed to do the 15 km that we set ourselves to do – just not the exact path we intended. 😀 it was good fun, though! We will try again soon!

Ana had a fantastic time presenting her work in sustainable materials for energy at this year’s Pint of Science. The audience was able to produce energy enough to light an LED and to make candyfloss – similar to how we produce fibres in our lab! Thank you all for a great evening!

Welcome to Hattie who joined our group in January 2022 to do a PhD in new freestanding electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction. You can learn more about Hattie here.

Ana has been awarded a Royal Society International Exchanges Grant with MIT.

This grant (March 2022 – March 2024) will start a new collaboration with Prof Brushett from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chemical Engineering Department) and his team. During this collaborative project Prof Brushett and several members of his team will visit our facilities and work in our labs to develop new understanding on electrode materials for redox flow batteries. Likewise, Ana Sobrido and several members of her research group will visit Brushett group’s facilities and acquire new knoweldge in stack testing and techno-economic analysis of the introduction of biomass-waste electrodes and replacement of commercial carbons.

The award will be the foundation for further collaborative research.

Well done to all the members of the team that did a great job presenting their project on 3D printed electrodes, supervised by Wei Tan and Ana Jorge Sobrido! Congratulations

Ana was among the shortlisted candidates for a QMUL Education for Sustainable Development 2022. Although in the end she did not win the award, she had a great time at the amazing Drapers’ Hall, talking to the rest of nominees about their experiences at QMUL.

Efficient Harvesting and Storage of Solar Energy of an All-Vanadium Solar Redox Flow Battery with a MoS2@TiO2 Photoelectrode

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2022 DOI: 10.1039/D2TA00739H

Gengyu Tian, Rhodri Jervis, Joe Briscoe, Madga Titirici and Ana Jorge Sobrido*

Abstract

Solar redox flow batteries constitute an emerging technology that provide a smart alternative for the capture and storage of discontinuous solar energy through the photo-generation of the discharged redox species employed in traditional redox flow batteries. Here, we show that a MoS2-decorated TiO2 (MoS2@TiO2) photoelectrode can successfully harvest light to be stored in a solar redox flow battery using vanadium ions as redox active species in both catholyte and anolyte, and without the use of any bias. MoS2@TiO2 photoelectrode achieved an average photocurrent density of ~0.4 mA cm-2 versus 0.08 mA cm-2 for bare TiO2, when tested for the oxidation of V4+ to V5+, attributed to a more efficient light harvesting and charge separation for the MoS2@TiO2 relative to TiO2. The designed solar redox flow cell exhibited an optimal overall solar-to-chemical conversion efficiency of ~4.78%, which outperforms previously reported solar redox flow batteries. This work demonstrates the potential of MoS2@TiO2 photoelectrode to efficiently convert solar energy in to chemical energy in a solar redox flow battery, and it also validates the great potential of this technology to increase reliability in renewable energies.

Applied Catalysis B: Environmental

Volume 310, 5 August 2022, 121355

Metal tellurides attract recent attention because of their promising applications as effective catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). However, inappropriate adsorption energy between OER intermediates and telluride leads to an unsatisfactory electrocatalytic intrinsic activity. Herein, we adopt a unique in-situ cathodic electrochemical activation process to facilitate the surface self-reconstruction to form oxygen vacancy (O_V)-rich TeO₂ layer onto Fe-doped NiTe (O_V@Fe-NiTe). Characterizations and theoretical calculation demonstrate that the presence of the O_V-rich TeO₂ layer realizes the adjustment of d-band center of the active site that translates into an enhancement of the adsorption of *OOH intermediate and thus the optimization of the OER pathway. Consequently, the O_V@Fe-NiTe only requires an ultralow overpotential of 245 mV to drive 100 mA cm^-2 in 1 M KOH, 95 mV lower than that of Fe-NiTe, and hence becoming the best water oxidation electrocatalysts amongst recently reported telluride electrocatalysts. This study presents a unique strategy to exploit telluride-based catalysts through electrochemical surface engineering.