TCD gets €150,000 to develop electrical storage system

Imagine a super thin sheet of material just one atom thick and you will be thinking about a new kind of electrical storage system under development at Trinity College Dublin. Prof Valeria Nicolosi has just received a grant of €150,000 to help develop this thin sheet technology into a working product.

She was one of just 33 top scientists across 15 EU countries to receive an European Research Council "proof of concept" grant in the latest round of Council funding announced today. (fri)

This is funding to help bring a research discovery closer to market by turning it into a usable product. The Council only provides very few of these grants, but they are an "important step towards innovation" said the Council's president Prof Helga Nowotny.

Prof Nicolosi is an ERC Research Professor at the School of Chemistry and at the School of Physics at Trinity and a principal investigator with Crann the nanotechnology research centre. She is the only Irish researcher to have received one of these grants in this round.

She is using “ultrasonic spray deposition” to create these two-dimensional sheets which hold the promise of providing a new way to store electrical energy.

They are tough and completely flexible and are known as “supercapacitors” because of their ability to story energy. They could be used to cover large surfaces, conduct electricity and can resist temperature extremes making them useful in many different ways, Prof Nicolosi suggests.

Prof Nicolosi is no stranger to Council awards having received a €1.5 million “starting grant” from the Council in 2011 to expand her work in processing and advanced characterisation of nanomaterials used in energy storage devices.

“Bringing the best ideas to market is what will keep Europe competitive and that in turn means jobs,” said EU Research Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn.

The first grant offer for these one-year awards attracted 145 proposals giving a success rate of about 24 per cent with €5 million awarded. A similar amount is available under the second proof of concept call for proposals which closes on October 3. ENDS