EMIL – a novel characterization platform for energy materials research
Speaker: Klaus Lips (Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin)
Abstract
The mission of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie GmbH (HZB) focuses on materials research for a sustainable, economic and secure energy supply in the future. The approach includes the understanding of basic principles, the development of dedicated infrastructures that allow guided design, synthesis and analyses, and the transfer to applications providing know‐why and know‐how for the society. One of these infrastructures is EMIL, the Energy Materials In-situ Laboratory Berlin. In a concerted effort, HZB and the Max Planck Society (MPG) are in the process to develop, install, and operate EMIL, a world-wide unique facility at the BESSY II synchrotron light source. EMIL is dedicated to the state-of-the-art synthesis and in-situ and in-operando X-ray analysis of materials and devices for energy conversion, energy storage, and energy efficiency. Work at EMIL will cover the range from basic and applied material science over technology and prototype development to industrial research. Research at EMIL will cover a broad range of energy-related topics including photovoltaics (PV), solar fuels, bio-mass to liquid fuels, thermoelectric materials, electrode materials for batteries, hydrogen storage, energy saving catalysts for the chemical industry for processes such as ammonia production, and new fields will develop as external users and industry will perform their research at EMIL.
EMIL combines a large variety of synthesis and deposition techniques for various material classes on substrate sizes up to 6’’ with sophisticated synchrotron-based analytics which can probe thin-layer and interface properties with nanometer scale resolution. Thus, different synchrotron-based X-ray characterization techniques are coupled to relevant deposition and post-treatment capabilities in one dedicated vacuum system.
In this presentation, I will provide an overview of EMIL’s research mission and its analytic and material capabilities and discuss possible research collaborations.
Bio
Klaus Lips has a background in solar energy research and is he specialized in the spectroscopy in bulk and interface defect properties of thin-film materials for photovoltaic application. Klaus studied physics in Leiden (NL) and Marburg (Germany). He received his PhD in 1994 for his work on the spin properties of defects in amorphous silicon solar cells from the University of Marburg for which he was also honored the Geiger award. As a postdoc at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, USA Klaus studied defect dynamics in solar cells with impedance spectroscopy. In 1996 he joined the Institute of Silicon Photovoltaics of the former Hahn-Meitner-Institut, now Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB) in Berlin-Adlershof. In 2002 Klaus became deputy director of that institute, a position he held until 2010. In 2011 he was nominated visiting professor at the University of Sydney and developed with his partners from USYD (now UNSW) a technology that allowed the successful implementation of photochemical upconversion into PV devices. Since 2011 Klaus Lips is head of the Energy Materials In-situLaboratory Berlin (EMIL), a world-wide unique facility at the BESSY II synchrotron light source of the HZB that will be operational in 2016 and is dedicated to the in-situ and in-system X-ray analysis of energy materials and devices. In 2012, Klaus was nominated professor at the physics department of the Free University Berlin (FUB). He is cofounder of the Berlin Joint EPR Laboratory that was established in 2013 as a joint laboratory of HZB and FUB and is dedicated to electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy with ultrahigh frequency, resolution, and sensitivity.
Klaus is vice president of the European Society for Quantum Solar Energy Conversion and contributed to over 170 scientific papers and 7 patents. Klaus is married and has four daughters. In his spare time he is a passionate marathon runner and writes music reviews for cultural magazines.