Graeber Lab for Energy Research

Congratulations to Johannes on his research being featured on the cover of Advanced Functional Materials in January! The cover depicts a false-color image of heat-treated carbon foam after contact with a sodium–potassium alloy.

https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.73774

Last week, Gustav and Andrea attended the Batterieforum Deutschland in Berlin. Andrea had the opportunity to present his poster, “NASICON Electrolytes for Room-Temperature Sodium-Sulfur Batteries: from Material Synthesis to Cell Testing” and to discuss our research with researchers worldwide.

We are very happy that Nicholas joined the group as a doctoral student. He earned his M.Eng. (Chemical) and B.Sc.(Chemical Systems) from the University of Melbourne, Australia. Nicholas’s expertise includes process safety and the use of process modelling and simulation to improve safety outcomes. Welcome, Nicholas!

Today, our work on "Water-in-Salt Electrolytes Embedded in Polyacrylamide Hydrogels: A First Step toward Deformable Sodium-Ion Batteries" has been published in ACS Applied Polymer Materials.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsapm.5c03031

Congratulations to Phillip!

We are very happy that Fariza joined the group as a postdoctoral researcher. She earned a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. degree in Physics in Kazakhstan before completing her PhD in Materials Science in KTU,  Lithuania. Fariza's expertise includes materials synthesis, thin-film deposition, and advanced electrochemical and structural characterization. Welcome, Fariza!

Last week, Maria participated in the final of the Forum Junge Spitzenforschung competition, where she presented the atmospheric water harvesting research that she and Gustav are conducting. Our team earned fourth place, congratulations to both of you! Many thanks to Humboldt Innovations for hosting the event and for connecting us with industry partners.

This week, Gustav attended the 12th Lithium-Sulfur Workshop in Dresden. At the workshop, he had the opportunity to present our recent work on potassium-sulfur batteries by Chiara and to learn many new things both from academia and industry about sulfur-based batteries. Thanks to Fraunhofer IWS for organizing this nice event!

Robert did a great job in defending his Bachelor's thesis about “Sustainable alkali-metal batteries based on abundantly available sulfur, sodium and potassium". Congratulations, Robert, for the successful defense, and thank you for your contributions to the lab in the past months!

Today, our work on "Wetting Interactions Between Porous Carbon Hosts and Liquid Sodium-Potassium Alloys Toward Their Use in Negative Electrodes of Alkali-Metal Batteries" has been published in Advanced Functional Materials (Wiley).

Link: https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202523169

Congratulations to Johannes!

We are very happy that Olha joined the group as a research intern. She is currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in Computational Engineering Science at Technische Universität Berlin. Welcome, Olha!