The ongoing energy transition from fossil fuel -based energy sources to renewable energy infrastructure is a vast scientific and societal challenge. The energy transition can be facilitated significantly by improving the energy efficiency at all levels. Even as we move away from combustion of fossil fuels in power plants and combustion engines, waste heat from sources such as microelectronics, batteries, fuel cells and industrial processes will remain as a major source of energy losses. Fluctuating waste heat currents can be converted to electrical energy by using pyroelectric materials. However, currently known pyroelectric materials are not efficient enough for widespread energy-harvesting applications. We will develop computational methods to explain the atomic-level mechanisms of pyroelectricity. This allows us to design and discover of novel pyroelectric materials for waste heat harvesting and electrochemical catalysis, and share this information with experimental collaborators.

2024

2028