Nanoscience research has the potential to make major contributions
to many areas of basic energy sciences. At the August 5-6 meeting of
the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (see http://www.aip.org/fyi/2004/115.html),
Altaf Carim of DOE's Office of Basic Energy Sciences discussed the report
of a spring 2004 workshop exploring this topic. The report lays out
nine specific research targets for which nanoscience is expected to
have a major impact, and six underlying cross-cutting themes for R&D
emphasis.
The Nanoscience Research for Energy Needs workshop, held March 16-18,
was sponsored by DOE's Office of Basic Energy Sciences and the National
Science and Technology Council's Subcommittee on Nanoscale Science,
Engineering and Technology. It was one of a number of "Grand Challenge"
workshops intended to provide input from the research community to the
development of an updated strategic plan for the multi-agency National
Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). According to the report, "The
goal of this workshop was to define opportunities and goals in energy-related
research for the next decade and to determine the special opportunities
that the field of nanoscience affords to energy research."
The report continues, "At the root of the opportunities provided
by nanoscience to impact our energy security is the fact that all the
elementary steps of energy conversion (charge transfer, molecular rearrangement,
chemical reactions, etc.) take place on the nanoscale. Thus, the development
of new nanoscale materials, as well as the methods to characterize,
manipulate and assemble them, creates an entirely new paradigm for developing
new and revolutionary energy technologies. Our workshop has identified
nine key areas of energy technology in which nanoscience can have the
greatest impact."
These nine research targets are: Scalable methods to split water with
sunlight for hydrogen production; Highly selective catalysts for clean
and energy-efficient manufacturing; Harvesting of solar energy with
20 percent power efficiency and 100 times lower cost; Solid-state lighting
at 50 percent of the present power consumption; Super-strong light-weight
materials to improve efficiency of cars, airplanes, etc.; Reversible
hydrogen storage materials operating at ambient temperatures; Power
transmission lines capable of 1 gigawatt transmission; Low-cost fuel
cells, batteries, thermoelectrics, and ultra-capacitors built from nanostructured
materials; and Materials synthesis and energy harvesting based on the
efficient and selective mechanisms of biology.
"The strategy for achieving these targets," the report says,
"lies in growing the R&D efforts in six crosscutting themes."
Most of the report is devoted to explaining these six themes, describing
such issues as research directions, major technical challenges, implementation
strategies and infrastructure needs. The six themes, with selected quotations
from the report, follow:
Catalysis by Nanoscale Materials: "Catalysis provides
the means of controlling the rates at which chemical bonds are formed
and broken," the report says. "The research challenge in nanoscience
for catalysis is learning to tune the energy landscape of the chemical
reactants as they interact with the nanostructured catalyst materials….
[N]anostructured materials must be designed to match both the structural
conformation of the reactants and to control the reaction pathway to
the desired product. To accomplish this, new and efficient methods of
in-situ characterization and rapid throughput testing of catalytic properties
will be required."
Using Interfaces to Manipulate Energy Carriers: "The
use of engineered nanostructures at interfaces has demonstrated a compelling
potential for improving energy security based on advances in efficient
power handling, low-power electronics, energy harvesting, and efficient
energy use in lighting. The most significant research challenge needed
to address these issues is to create interfaces that are tailored at
the nanoscale to optimize transport of energy in many forms (electrons,
phonons, photons, excitons)."
Linking Structure and Function at the Nanoscale: "At
the heart of nanoscience are the new phenomena and properties that emerge
as materials are constructed at the nanometer scale…. The overarching
research challenge that we face in designing novel nanomaterials is
establishing the physical and chemical principles that determine the
functionality that emerges at nanometer length scales, and exploiting
this functionality for improved energy security…. Meeting this
challenge will involve cross-cutting research correlating exploratory
synthesis, functional characterization, and theory, modeling, and simulation."
Assembly and Architecture: "Exploiting the novel
properties of individual nanostructures will generally involve assembling
the nanostructures into carefully designed and controlled architectures
that amplify or modify their desired functionality. The major research
challenge is to predict the properties of assemblies of nanostructures
and to devise novel strategies for assembly of these architectures,
initially in small quantities, but eventually in bulk."
Theory, Modeling, and Simulation for Energy Nanoscience:
"Opportunities in nanoscience and technology encompass a combinatorially
large range of solid-state and molecular materials, chemical compositions,
interface configurations, and system architectures. Predicting the structure,
composition, and architectures that give rise to desirable functional
behavior is a major research challenge, which can only be met by using
the power of theory, modeling, and simulation (TMS)…. Today, the
TMS capabilities to meet these needs exist in varying degrees of maturity,
with demonstrated potential to develop the expanded power needed for
the nanoscience research challenges."
Scalable Synthesis Methods: "The ultimate research
challenge is to synthesize functional nanomaterials at a practical manufacturing
level in a controllable manner…. The synthesis of nanomaterials
involves challenges in the quality, quantity, variety, and integrated
design and assembly of nanomaterials."
The 70-page report of the workshop, "Nanoscience Research for
Energy Needs," can be found at http://www.sc.doe.gov/bes/reports/files/NREN_rpt.pdf.
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