E-MRS Symposium: Materials for energy conversion systems: fundamentals, designs, and applications
The European Materials Science Society (E-MRS) Spring Meeting was held at the Convention & Exhibition Centre of Strasbourg (France), from May 29 to June 2, 2023 consisting of 21 parallel symposia with invited speakers, oral and poster presentations assorted by three plenary sessions. The IRTG was integrated in the cluster covering the field of energy materials. This year is a special one for the E-MRS as they are celebrating 40 years of service to the Materials research community.
Our symposium addressed a variety of materials and technologies that are critically needed to develop state-of-art coupled energy conversion systems. The symposium was successfully applied for and organized by a joint team of PIs and doctoral researchers. The head organizers were Dr. Maria Rita Cicconi (FAU), Tomokatsu Hayakawa (NITech), Brahim Dkhil (University Paris-Saclay), and Marin Alexe (University of Warwick). We organized the symposium together with researchers from Université Paris-Saclay (France) and University Warwick (UK) to represent the interdisciplinary synergies required.
We were able to share the progress and challenges of developing novel advanced materials/devices based particularly but not limited to sustainable lead-free materials. The different sessions covered all aspects of electro-optical and electro-mechanical energy conversion systems, from the fundamental aspects, the development of new advanced processes, and the simulation/modelling, development and integration of functional materials in energy harvesters. Particular attention was devoted to lead-free perovskites that have clearly demonstrated a multi-functionality, such as ferroelectricity in electro-optical materials and a photovoltaic response in ferroelectrics.
In total, the 2023 E-MRS Spring Meeting had over 2000 attendees and 21 symposia. From all of the symposia, however, our symposium received the highest number of submissions, with over 360 submitted abstracts for individual presentations (oral, poster, and invited). Attendance at our symposium was highly international, covering 6 continents. Through 22 invited talks doctoral researchers had the opportunity to discuss the latest scientific results and the hottest research topics. In addition, the sponsor Applied Physics Letters supported two awards for young researchers, which were given out at the event.
The symposium is part of the qualification programm and many of our FAU and NITech doctoral researchers were directly involved since the beginning of the proposal submission (January 2022) through to the actual event.
