Ginger’s project, which will receive $1.25 million, focuses on developing new methods to alleviate the impact of defects in perovskite solar cells. Perovskites are printable crystalline compounds that can harvest sunlight and convert it to electricity at efficiencies comparable to silicon-based semiconductors used in today’s solar cells. Perovskite solar cells could be printed on roll-to-roll printers like newspapers, reducing manufacturing costs. They are a rapidly growing branch of solar cell research and development, and , operated by the CEI, includes facilities for developing and testing these technologies, including a 30-foot-long multistage roll-to-roll printer.

Atomic-scale defects at perovskite surfaces can reduce their performance. Previous research by Ginger’s group has shown that surface “passivation” 鈥� treating perovskites with different chemical compounds 鈥� can “heal” these defects and improve the efficiency of perovskite solar cells. But when these perovskites are assembled into solar cells, the current-collecting electrodes can create new defects, sapping efficiency. With this new funding, Ginger and his collaborators, Seth Marder and Carlos Silva at Georgia Tech, will develop new chemical passivation strategies, and new charge-collecting materials, that allow perovskites to reach their full potential while still remaining compatible with low-cost manufacturing.

Gamelin’s project, which will receive $200,000, aims to modify solar cells so they can collect high-energy photons more efficiently. Today’s solar cells can convert low-energy photons to electrical power efficiently, but the high-energy variety is converted at very low efficiency 鈥� a major source of energy loss. Gamelin’s team has developed materials that can absorb high-energy photons and emit twice as many low-energy photons, a process termed “quantum cutting.” Their SETO project seeks to integrate these materials as thin layers on the surfaces of solar cells. These surface coatings would essentially “convert” high-energy photons to low-energy photons, allowing their absorption by the solar cell and potentially doubling the current generated by the solar cell. With the new funding, Gamelin’s team will work to develop scalable deposition techniques and prototype large-area solar cells.

The funds from the Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office are part of $28 million in awards for 25 projects in photovoltaics and related fields to boost efficiency and reduce costs in solar energy, according to a March 22 from the office. The first set of selections from this program, announced late last year, included more than $2.3 million awarded to 91探花projects.

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The 91探花 and its 聽named Kevin Klustner executive director of the . When complete, CAMCET will be a 340,000-square-foot building that will bring together 91探花scientists and engineers with industry, civic and nonprofit partners to accelerate clean energy solutions for a healthy planet.

The building will house space for research, learning and cleantech prototyping, testing and validating. It will also offer space for organizations aligned with the UW鈥檚 clean energy innovation mission. CAMCET is the first building under consideration for a location in the 91探花West Campus 鈥� an area designated in the for 3 million square-feet of new development that will foster a thriving collaboration ecosystem for the 91探花and partners.

鈥� 91探花and its Clean Energy Institute have helped establish Washington as a leader in clean energy innovation and the CAMCET building will catapult Washington to even greater heights,鈥� said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee. 鈥淲ith this center, our students will get the best education and prepare for jobs of the future, while our cleantech companies will grow and create good jobs for our economy.鈥�

鈥� 91探花is a powerhouse in advanced materials and clean energy research and development,鈥� said Klustner. 鈥淐AMCET will connect these 91探花researchers with local and global industry and nonprofit partners to bring critical clean technologies to the world. CAMCET, and West Campus at large, represents a new model for buildings on campus that will greatly benefit our students, faculty, and region and I鈥檓 proud to help lead this effort.鈥�

Klustner has held a variety of executive roles in technology and cleantech companies. Most recently, he was the CEO of Powerit Solutions, a cloud-based industrial energy efficiency platform, which was acquired by Customized Energy Solutions. Prior to Powerit, he was the CEO of Verdiem, a venture-backed software company in the energy efficiency space. Klustner was also the chief operating officer of WRQ, a privately held enterprise networking company. While there, he helped grow the company from $15 million to $200 million in revenues.

鈥淜evin brings a wealth of cleantech industry experience that will help ensure CAMCET builds on UW鈥檚 strengths to create a hub for clean energy research and technology in the Pacific Northwest,鈥� said , 91探花CEI Director and Boeing-Sutter Professor of Chemical Engineering. 鈥淓xternal partners that join 91探花in CAMCET will have access to a fantastic talent pool and the instruments and technology testbeds needed to advance their ventures. With CAMCET, 91探花will chart an exciting course for how we educate future clean energy leaders and build a community dedicated to getting clean energy technologies to market faster to combat climate change.鈥�

In January 2018, the Washington State Legislature allocated $20 million to the 91探花to establish CAMCET. The building will house:

• Research
  • : The CEI supports the advancement of next-generation solar energy and battery materials and devices, as well as their integration with systems and the grid.
  • : A joint research collaboration of the U.S. Department of Energy’s聽 and the UW.
  • Wet, dry, and computational lab space for advanced materials and clean energy research and training.
  • Market-rate leasable research spaces.
• Industry/ Government/ NGOs
  • : The CEI鈥檚 open-access, fee-for-use facility for prototyping, testing, and validating clean technologies. The facility takes no intellectual property from external users. It also hosts Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Investor-in-Residence programs available to cleantech innovators across the region.
  • Startup lab modules and hot desks.
  • Market-rate leasable spaces.
• Learning
  • Active learning spaces for students.
  • Seminar and meeting rooms.
  • Collaboration Spaces.
• Public
  • Venues for events, conferences, and K-12 and public outreach.

UW鈥檚 West Campus is located just south of the forthcoming U District Link Light Rail Station and within short walking distance of greenspace and the Portage Bay waterfront.

Subject to 91探花Regents鈥� approval, 91探花will seek a developer for CAMCET in 2019, with construction currently slated to begin in fall 2020.

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For more information, contact Suzanne Offen聽with the Clean Energy Institute at +1 206-685-6410 or聽soffen@uw.edu.

The United States Department of Energy has awarded an expected $10.75 million, four-year grant to the 91探花, the and other partner institutions for a new interdisciplinary research center to define the enigmatic rules that govern how molecular-scale building blocks assemble into ordered structures 鈥� and give rise to complex hierarchical materials.

The Center for the Science of Synthesis Across Scales, or CSSAS, will bring together researchers from biology, engineering and the physical sciences to uncover new insights into how molecular interactions control assembly and apply these principles toward creating new materials with novel and revolutionary properties for applications in energy technology.

“This center seeks to understand the fundamental rules of how order emerges from the interaction of simple building blocks,” said CSSAS Director , the Matthaei Professor and Chair of the 91探花Department of Chemical Engineering. “What are the energetics, rates and pathways involved, and what properties emerge when simple components come together in increasingly complex layers? Those are some of our driving questions.”

The UW-based CSSAS is among the newest members of the Energy Frontier Research Centers by the Department of Energy. These centers, operated out of universities and national labs, are funded by the Department of Energy and devoted to specific goals in energy science. The work at the CSSAS will focus on understanding the principles of “hierarchical synthesis” 鈥� the process by which molecules come together, bind, interact and create layer upon layer of higher-ordered structures.

CSSAS experiments will focus on protein-based building blocks, but will also probe protein-like synthetic compounds called peptoids as well as inorganic nanoparticles. Studying the biologically inspired assembly of these systems individually and in combination will shed new light on how living organisms, through billions of years of adaptation and evolution, have created complex hierarchical systems to solve a host of challenges, said Baneyx.

Understanding hierarchical synthesis would allow engineers to design and build new materials with unique properties for innovative technological advancements that can come about only when scientists exert precise control over a material. For example, controlling how charges move precisely through a material 鈥� or how a substrate is shuttled between the active sites of a series of enzymes positioned with nanoscale precision 鈥� could be key to creating new materials for energy storage, transmission and generation. The precision control that scientists envision could also yield functional materials that are self-healing or self-repairing, and have other custom physical properties designed within them.

“Scientists have been trying to create these types of innovative materials largely through ‘top-down’ approaches, and often by reverse engineering an interesting biological material,” said Baneyx. “We will begin with the blocks themselves, exploring how order evolves in the synthesis process when the blocks are put together and interact.”

CSSAS research will focus on three major areas:

• Investigating the emergence of order from the interactions of individual building blocks, be they peptoids, inorganic nanoparticles or protein-based particles
• Probing how hierarchy unfolds as these building blocks are combined to construct lattices, active structures and hybrid materials
• Using machine learning, computational simulations and big data analytics to learn new ways to control the assembly dynamics of hierarchical structures

These investigations will build upon work conducted at the 91探花, led by 91探花biochemistry professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator , and harness the expertise of researchers at the University of Chicago, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of California, San Diego.

The CSSAS effort was enabled by , or NW IMPACT, which was formally launched earlier this year by 91探花President Ana Mari Cauce and PNNL Director Steven Ashby to fertilize cross-disciplinary collaborations between 91探花and PNNL researchers. NW IMPACT co-director , who is the PNNL chief scientist for materials synthesis and simulation across scales and also holds a joint appointment at the 91探花in both chemistry and materials science and engineering, will serve as the deputy director of the CSSAS.

“This center’s focus is ultimately on unlocking potential,” said Baneyx. “Once we understand the fundamental rules governing the assembly of bioinspired building blocks, we will be able to design new materials to meet a broad range of technological needs.”

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For more information, contact Baneyx at 206-685-7659 or baneyx@uw.edu and De Yoreo at 509-375-6494 or james.deyoreo@pnnl.gov.

Many innovations of 21st century life, from touch screens and electric cars to fiber-optics and implantable devices, grew out of research on new materials. This impact of materials science on today’s world has prompted two of the leading research institutions in the Pacific Northwest to join forces to research and develop new materials that will significantly influence tomorrow’s world.

With this eye toward the future, the Department of Energy’s and the announced the creation of the 鈥� or NW IMPACT 鈥� a joint research endeavor to power discoveries and advancements in materials that transform energy, telecommunications, medicine, information technology and other fields. 91探花President and PNNL Director formally launched NW IMPACT during a ceremony Jan. 31 at the PNNL campus in Richland, Washington.

“This partnership holds enormous potential for innovations in materials science that could lead to major changes in our lives and the world,” said Cauce. “We are excited to strengthen the ties between our two organizations, which bring complementary strengths and a shared passion for ground-breaking discovery.”

“The science of making new materials is vital to a wide range of advancements, many of which we have yet to imagine,” said Ashby. “By combining ideas, talent and resources, I have no doubt our two organizations will find new ways to improve lives and provide our next generation of materials scientists with valuable research opportunities.”

The institute builds on a history of successful partnerships between the 91探花and PNNL, including joint faculty appointments and past collaborations such as the , the PNNL-led and a new UW-based . But NW IMPACT is the beginning of a long-term partnership, forging deeper ties between the 91探花and PNNL.

The goal is to leverage these respective strengths to enable discoveries, innovations and educational opportunities that would not have been possible by either institution alone.

“By partnering the 91探花and PNNL together through NW IMPACT, the sum will truly be greater than the parts,” said David Ginger, a 91探花professor of chemistry and chief scientist at the 91探花. 聽“We are joining together our expertise and experiences to create the next generation of leaders who will create the materials of the future.”

Ginger will co-lead the institution in its initial phase with Jim De Yoreo, chief scientist for materials synthesis and simulation across scales at PNNL and a joint appointee at the UW.

Over its first few years, NW IMPACT aims to hire a permanent institute director, who will be based at both PNNL and the UW; create at least 20 new joint UW-PNNL appointments among existing researchers; streamline access to research facilities at the UW’s Seattle campus and PNNL’s Richland campus for institute projects; involve at least 20 new 91探花graduate students in PNNL- 91探花collaborations; and provide seed grants to institute-affiliated researchers to tackle new scientific frontiers in a collaborative fashion.

Some of the areas in which NW IMPACT will initially focus include:

• Materials for energy conversion and storage, which can be applied to more efficient solar cells, batteries and industrial applications. These include innovative approaches to create flexible, ultrathin solar cells for buildings or fabrics, long-lasting batteries for implantable medical devices, catalysts to enable high efficiency energy conversion and industrial processes, and manufacturing methods to synthesize these materials efficiently for commercial applications.
• Quantum materials, such as ultrathin semiconductors or other materials that can harness the rules of quantum mechanics at subatomic-level precision for applications in quantum computing, telecommunications and beyond.
• Materials for water separation and utilization, which include processes to make water purification and ocean desalination methods faster, cheaper and more energy-efficient.
• Biomimetic materials, which are synthetic materials inspired by the structures and design principles of biological molecules and materials within our cells 鈥� including proteins and DNA. These materials could be applicable in medical settings for implantable devices or tissue engineering, and for self-assembled protein-like scaffolds in industrial settings.

“The science of making materials involves understanding where the atoms must be placed in order to obtain the properties needed for specific applications, and then understanding how to get the atoms where they need to be,” said De Yoreo.

NW IMPACT will draw on the unique strengths and talents of each institution for innovative collaborations in these areas. For example, PNNL has broad expertise in materials for improved batteries. The lab also offers best-in-class imaging, NMR and mass spectrometry capabilities at , a DOE Office of Science user facility. DOE supports fundamental research at PNNL in chemistry, physics and materials sciences that are key to materials development. The 91探花brings complementary facilities and equipment to the partnership, such as the and a cryo-electron microscopy facility, as well as expertise in a variety of “big data” research and training endeavors, highly rated research and education programs, and ongoing materials research projects through the National Science Foundation-funded .

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For more information, contact James Urton with the 91探花News Office at 206-543-2580 or jurton@uw.edu and Susan Bauer with the PNNL News & Media Relations Office at 509-372-6083 or susan.bauer@pnnl.gov.