Digital twins are cyber-physical systems that fuse real-time sensor data with models to make accurate, asset-specific predictions and optimal decisions. For batteries, this concept has been applied across length scales, from materials to systems. However, a holistic approach with a strong conceptual and mathematical framework is needed for battery digital twins to achieve their full potential at the

Antoine Levesque is a postdoctoral researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact research (PIK), where he started working in 2014. His research focuses on the decarbonization of buildings, efficiency policies, and energy demand projections. Prior to the PIK, he worked at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria. He earned a PhD in economics at the Technische

Download : Download high-res image (85KB) Download : Download full-size image Alexander Roth is a research associate at the Energy, Transportation, Environment Department at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin). He is also a PhD student at the DIW’s Graduate Center. His research interests lie in the fields of energy economics focusing on the integration of renewable energies into

Jeffrey Gifford is a PhD Candidate in the Advanced Energy Systems program sponsored by National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Colorado School of Mines. He previously earned his M. and BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Colorado – Boulder and Purdue University, respectively, and has worked at NREL as a graduate researcher. His research interests include energy storage systems

Large-scale energy storage systems are critical on the road to electrifying and decarbonizing the grid's energy. However, these systems consist of numerous individual cells and various ancillary systems, where monitoring and controlling cell-level behavior become challenging due to potential cell-to-cell variations. In a recent issue of Applied Energy, Reniers and Howey built a digital twin for a 1

In this issue of Joule, Dincă and co-workers showcase a fused aromatic organic electrode material that exhibits remarkable physicochemical properties, such as high electrical conductivity, rapid ion transport, and insolubility in the electrolyte. As a result, the material functions as an excellent pseudocapacitive material that can efficiently store and discharge energy in a short period of time.

The development of in situ techniques for electrochemical materials is of particular significance for revealing the mechanisms of energy devices. In a recent issue of Nature Energy, Zhang et al. revealed the charge storage mechanisms by tracking the in situ changes in capacitive materials using ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy.

Finding a sustainable strategy to produce hydrogen fuel with sunlight is a long-standing challenge. In a recent issue of Nature Communications, Xu et al. show that coating photosynthetic algae with a protective inorganic shell, creating bionic algae, improves their potential to produce solar hydrogen.

The global push toward decarbonization and electrification has led to a rapidly growing research effort to achieve ever-increasing device performance goals. These efforts have resulted in novel electrochemical energy storage devices (EESDs) with a variety of chemistries and materials, such as aerogels, which have significantly improved energy densities, power densities, and rate capabilities. To date

In a recent Nature Communications article, Magee et al. report on the promising results of a first-of-its-kind experiment conducted in the large helical device (LHD) with a boron plasma. High-energy protons, injected by neutral beams, generated high-energy alpha particles through proton-boron reactions in a magnetically confined plasma.

The active sites of Cu catalysts for CO2 electrocatalysis during operation remain elusive. In a recent publication in Nature, Yang et al. utilized multimodal operando techniques to investigate structural dynamics of Cu nanocatalysts throughout their life cycle, revealing metallic Cu nanograin boundaries as the active sites for promoting C-C coupling.

Recently in Nature, Park and coworkers elucidated the role of each long alkyl ammonium cation (RA+) and chloride (Cl−) in modulating the phase transition of FAPbI3. A record power conversion efficiency of 26.08% (certified 25.7%) with improved light stability was obtained.

The integration of carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and conversion processes presents an opportunity to reduce energy and capital costs required to create useful products from dilute CO2 streams, such as air or flue gas. In an integrated system, regeneration of the CO2 capture media is achieved directly through the conversion of CO2 to value-added products, eliminating dedicated CO2 desorption and compression

Andrew Weng is a PhD candidate in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Michigan under the supervision of Dr. Anna Stefanopoulou. His research focuses on leveraging battery manufacturing data to model and predict the long-term performance and safety of lithium-ion battery systems. Eric J. Dufek, PhD, is the department manager for the Energy Storage and Electric Transportation Department

Tim Schittekatte is a research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and joined the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) in October 2021. At MIT, he conducts research and teaches about power market design and regulation. Prior to joining MIT, he was a research fellow at the Florence School of Regulation (FSR) at the European University Institute (EUI), where he is now also a part-time assistant

Lithium metal solid-state batteries (LiSSBs) present new challenges in the measurement of material, component, and cell mechanical behaviors and in the measurement and theory of fundamental mechanical-electrochemical (thermodynamics, transport, and kinetics) couplings. Here, we classify the major mechanical and electrochemical-mechanical (ECM) studies underway and provide an overview of major mechanical

The authors organized the workshop “Accelerating Climate-Mitigating Technology Development and Deployment”, bringing together experts in energy innovation, investment, modeling, and policy. Together, they developed a research agenda for bridging granular private investment data and energy systems models to inform climate and innovation policy (https://drum.lib.umd.edu/handle/1903/21828). The authors

The challenge in optimizing biohybrid photoelectrodes lies in identifying kinetic bottleneck and energy loss of photoinduced electron transfer. In this issue of Joule, Friebe’s group describes a method for synchronized spectroscopic and electrochemical measurements of biophotoelectrode in operando, which indicates the electron transfer bottleneck steps and the energy loss processes.

In a recent issue of Nature, Zhou et al. report an artificial photosynthesis scheme that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen with an overall energy efficiency of nearly 10%, close to the value needed for commercial viability. This preview provides a technological context for this advancement and discusses needed next steps.

Understanding the fundamentals of directional electromagnetic energy conversion under dynamic electrochemical conditions in wearable electronics is a long-standing challenge. In a recent study published in Nature Nanotechnology, Gogotsi and coworkers described the controllable conversion of electromagnetic, electrochemical, and heat energy at gigahertz frequencies in integrated MXene electronics and

The recent report by Zhu et al. in Nature Energy demonstrated a strategy to achieve well-organized three-dimensional permanent hierarchically ordered structures (HOS) by thermally processing conductive polymers to achieve improved charge transfer properties and mechanical strength, which are significant for lithium-ion batteries.

Dr. Minyuan M. Li is a postdoctoral associate in the Battery Materials & Systems Group at PNNL. His research interests include inorganic syntheses, nanomaterials, and electrochemistry. He is currently developing new battery chemical systems for long-duration and seasonal energy storage applications to support grid resiliency. Dr. Jon Mark Weller is a postdoctoral research associate in the Battery Materials

Dr. Maksym Chepeliev is a senior research economist at the Center for Global Trade Analysis at Purdue University. Before joining Purdue, he was a research associate at the Institute for Economics and Forecasting at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, where he received his PhD in 2016. His work focuses on the analysis of a variety of global and regional economic issues, including agricultural

Cristina Crespo Montañés is a PhD Candidate in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Link Foundation Energy Fellow. Her research studies social and spatial inequities in urban energy transitions. She has been a Fulbright Spain scholar and received an MS in Industrial Engineering from École Centrale Paris and Universitat Politécnica de València. Dr. Eric O’Shaughnessy

Download : Download high-res image (223KB) Download : Download full-size image John Deutch is an emeritus institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1970. He has served as chairman of the Department of Chemistry, dean of science, and provost. In the Carter administration, he served as director of energy research (1977–1979), acting

Artificial aligned nanochannels are useful for the applications that require fast and high-flux ion transport, such as osmotic energy, battery, catalysis, filtration, and nanofluidic iontronics. Recently in Science Advances, Hu and colleagues proposed a simple, scalable preparation method for cellulose-derived supramolecule-based aligned nanochannels with a minuscule size of 1 nm, which shows its superior