$4.5 Million for Monash Initiatives That Drive Transition to Sustainable Energy

Source: Sally Wood

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) recently announced more than $4.5 million in funding for two Monash University-led projects to enable the discovery of new materials that will drive the global transition to a sustainable energy future.

The funding, which is supported by the Federal Government, will provide vital assistance for Monash to establish a $7 million leading facility at the Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication. It will seek to accelerate the development of new materials through both vacuum and printing processes. The facility, made available through the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, will strengthen Australia’s competitiveness in the development of next-generation solar cells, solar fuels, batteries and various other types of new energy technologies. Professor of Chemical Engineering at Monash University, Udo Bach received $3.9 million in funding to establish the dedicated ‘High Throughput SolutionProcessable Photovoltaic Materials Discovery Facility’. It will bring together advanced robotics, automation and artificial intelligence concepts to rapidly synthesise, deposit and test the properties of new generations of printable and ‘paint on’ energy materials. Professor Bach, who is also a Chief Investigator of the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science, said the facility will place Australia in a sound global position. “Monash is a world leader in energy science and engineering. This facility will dramatically increase the rate of discovery in the energy materials space as Australia, and indeed other countries globally, prioritise a reduction in carbon emissions and a transition to sustainable energy sources,” he explained. The new facility will have the capacity to run autonomously for 24 hours, while making and characterising thin film coatings. It will allow future users to speed up their experimental throughput by at least 100 times compared to conventional research practices. Ongoing research into perovskites – an emerging material for next generation solar cells – will also be a major focus. In addition, ARENA has contributed a further $661,000 to a team led by Professor Jacek Jasieniak at Monash University, to progress new materials discovery through an advanced sputtering tool. Sputtering is a phenomenon where nanoscopic particles of a solid material are ejected from a surface, after the material itself is hit with energised particles of plasma or gas. It is a technique used in the manufacturing of high-precision optical coatings, semiconductor devices and nanotechnology products. This customised system will enable combinatorial discovery of materials, where different target materials will be simultaneously mixed to provide practically unlimited material combinations. “The development of new materials and interfaces is critical towards future progress in silicon and other emerging photovoltaics. However, such developments are inherently unproductive and expensive,” Professor Jasieniak said. This system can support the accelerated discovery and development of materials suitable across many aspects related to photovoltaics, including new earthabundant inorganic absorbers, interfacing transport layers, electrodes, anti-reflective coatings and protecting layers. “The proposed facility will develop a new capability in a combinatorial sputtering system within Australia that will accelerate the development and optimisation of sputtered inorganic materials in a big way compared to more conventional vacuum techniques,” Professor Jasieniak explained. A number of organisations have also contributed funding towards these projects, including Monash University, the Australian National Fabrication Facility, CSIRO and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science. Professor Elizabeth Croft, Dean of Monash University’s Faculty of Engineering, said the investments are an important step in transforming how Australia’s energy systems function. “With our top nationally-ranked and world-leading research in chemical engineering and materials science and engineering, and our leadership in data science, robotics and AI, Monash is uniquely placed to drive the novel scientific advances in energy materials, and the automated optimisation.”

Monash University received $3.9 million in funding to establish the dedicated ‘High Throughput SolutionProcessable Photovoltaic Materials Discovery Facility’.