Coordinator Valeria Braccini
The global challenges of climate and energy require new technologies for renewable energy sources, methods of energy storage and efficient energy use. Innovative systems for energy transport, storage and conversion and their development and demonstration through improved materials and technologies represent undoubtedly strategic issues for the scientific policy of the SPIN institute.
This project addresses the challenge of discovering and providing new, innovative materials required for the transition to a sustainable energy system: materials for harvesting energy from renewable sources, transporting and storing energy and converting it into other forms of energy. Different functional properties (as ion conductivity, photovoltaic, catalysis, piezoelectricity) are exploited to design the next generation of materials for green energy applications. Superconductors are exemplary quantum materials that can be employed to study fundamental properties of the quantum world as well as their functionality for accelerating the energy transition. From nanostructured materials to large-scale devices, superconductors offer a playground for developing new enabling technologies in many applications, from medical imaging, transportation, to magnetic confinement for nuclear fusion, particle accelerators, quantum and supercomputing, for instance, aiming to the development of superconducting materials for clean, safe and saving energy.
According to the well-recognized experience of the SPIN scientific community in the cited fields and aiming to intercept such a challenging perspective, within this Area various new improved superconductors and other functional materials will be studied – from the discovery and investigation of new materials towards the development of new technological applications to the realization of prototypes in collaboration with industrial partners.
Nowadays, the SPIN institute has well established competences for computational modelling of new superconductors to guide their synthesis and exploit the quantum nature of advanced materials for device design.
This Area has been splitted into two research themes, referring to the particular materials under investigation.
- Superconductors towards Energy Production, Transport and Storage, and High Magnetic Fields
Coordinator Gaia Grimaldi - Materials for Energy and Environment
Coordinator Carmela Aruta
