Christian Prehal
Christian is currently an assistant professor at the University of Salzburg. Until June 2023, he was a researcher and lecturer working with Prof. Vanessa Wood in the Materials and Device Engineering Group at the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at ETH Zürich. From 2008 to 2017, he studied Materials Science and Engineering and did a Ph.D. in Materials Physics and Electrochemistry at the Montanuniversität Leoben (Austria). Based on his background in Materials Science, Materials Physics, and Electrochemistry, he aims to contribute a Systems Materials Engineering approach to sustainable battery systems. Interdisciplinarity will be key to realizing this.
His scientific achievements relate to either physical charge storage or electrochemical energy storage in the confinement of nanoporous materials. The essential contribution of his Ph.D. in the group of Oskar Paris was to combine in situ small-angle x-ray scattering and atomistic Monte-Carlo simulations to understand details of capacitive energy storage in supercapacitors (Energy & Environmental Science 2015, Nature Energy 2017, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2017).
Besides continuing activities on supercapacitors and nanoporous carbons (Nature Communications 2018, Carbon 2019), as a postdoc in the group of Stefan Freunberger (former TU Graz, now IST Austria), he expanded the developed methods to lithium-air batteries. Outcomes of this work explained capacity limitations and generalized the physicochemical reaction model (PNAS 2021, ACS Energy Letters 2022). In a collaborative project on iodide-based aqueous energy storage (Nature Communications 2020), Christian and coworkers set the foundations for non-flammable aqueous batteries; with capacity per cathode mass not far from lithium-ion batteries and rate capabilities on par with supercapacitors.
From 2020, as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at ETH, he explored the nanoscale structural evolution and underlying mechanisms in lithium-sulfur batteries using in situ small-angle scattering, stochastic modeling, and (cryo-)electron microscopy (Nature Communications 2022). Since 2022, an ETH Career Seed Grant further supports his research on Li-S batteries.
As an ETH lecturer, Christian holds the course Energy Storage, which is part of the CAS course Applied Technology in Energy.
In December 2022, Christian received an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council. In July 2023, he started a tenure-track position at the University of Salzburg (Austria). There, he will work on the ERC Starting Grant project SOLIDCON.
Postdocs
Pronoy Dutta
Pronoy has a background in physics and did his Ph.D. at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati. During his Ph.D. he optimized MXene-based supercapacitors by tailoring the electrodes’ microstructure. His interdisciplinary background in physics, characterization, and synthesis will be ideal for working on electrochemical energy storage in confinement. Specifically, Pronoy will investigate Na-based storage in nanoporous carbons.
Ph.D. students
Jean-Marc von Mentlen
Jean-Marc has a background in Electrical Engineering and is a Ph.D. student working in the Materials and Device Engineering Group at ETH Zürich. He is jointly supervised by Vanessa Wood (ETH Zürich) and Christian Prehal. His research focuses on understanding the fundamentals of electrochemical phase transformations in Li-S batteries. He combines cryo TEM/STEM/EELS with operando small angle neutron scattering, and machine-learning assisted stochastic modelling to quantify the complex nanoscale phase evolution during electrochemical operation of Li-S batteries.
Sven Dunkel
Ayca Şenol Güngör
Ayca has a background in Materials Science and is currently a Ph.D. student in the Materials Device Engineering Group at ETH Zürich. She is jointly supervised by Vanessa Wood (ETH Zürich) and Christian Prehal. Her research focuses on enhancing the performance of liquid-electrolyte Li-S batteries employing solid-state sulfur/lithium sulfide conversion. In particular, she tests microporous carbons and MXenes as conductive host materials combined with carbonate electrolytes to identify capacity and rate-limiting factors of solid-state sulfur/lithium sulfide conversion.
Klara Neumayr
Klara studied Physics at Ludwigs-Maximilian University Munich (LMU) and has expertise in machine-learning-based battery lifetime prediction. Her research will combine methods of data science (like Design of experiments and Bayesian Optimization) with electrochemical testing and X-ray scattering of post-Li-ion batteries. We aim to understand the relation between the multidimensional parameter space, the nanoscale structure, and the batterie´s properties. Systems of interest are Na-S batteries and aqueous zinc-halogenide batteries.
Sven holds a bachelor's degree in Mechatronic Engineering from TU Darmstadt and a master's degree in Energy Science and Technology from ETH Zurich. With his engineering background, experience in battery integration, and previous work in Li-S batteries he is in a great position to work on post-Li-ion batteries. His research focuses on optimizing hard carbon synthesis for Na-ion batteries from biogenic precursors. He aims to combine X-ray scattering, electrochemical testing, and data-driven process optimization to understand the impact of hard carbon synthesis processes and resulting properties.
Master students
Lorenz Gruber
Lorenz is doing a Master‘s degree in Chemistry and Physics of Materials. In our group, he investigates the sodiation and desodiation mechanism in hard carbon Na-ion battery anodes using operando SAXS/WAXS. We aim to correlate structural parameters to the electrochemical mechanisms and properties.
Matthias Zern
Matthias is doing a Master‘s degree in Chemistry and Physics of Materials. In his thesis project he will work on Li-S batteries using nanoporous carbons and sparingly solvating electrolytes. We aim to understand the impact of the carbon nanostructure on electrochemical solid-state or quasi-solid-state sulfur conversion.