Visualizing the internal architecture of battery materials
Dr. Priyanka Sharma receives the Arbeitskreis Kohlenstoff Research Award for her outstanding dissertation
Dr. Priyanka Sharma won the AKK Research Award for her dissertation on carbon xerogels in vanadium redox flow batteries, enhancing energy storage technology.
Dr. Priyanka Sharma, former PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Claudia Weidenthaler at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, won the Arbeitskreis Kohlenstoff (AKK) Research Award for her dissertation “Characterization of Carbon Xerogels for Application in Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries.” The award includes a €1,000 prize and a two-year AKK membership.
Vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) are among the most promising technologies for large-scale energy storage. They are durable and stable but still limited by their cost and performance of key components such as electrodes and bipolar plates. In her dissertation, Sharma explored how carbon xerogels, lightweight, porous carbon materials, can be used as electrocatalysts on electrodes and as conductive nanofillers in bipolar plates. She combined spectroscopy, microscopy, and advanced synchrotron-based X-ray tomography to investigate how microstructure and chemical composition influence electrochemical performance. Using this novel multi-scale imaging approach, she visualized the internal architecture of composite materials in unprecedented detail.
Her results revealed a delicate balance between improving conductivity and maintaining corrosion resistance, while demonstrating that carbon xerogels can outperform conventional carbon black as conductive fillers. The work also sets a methodological benchmark for synchrotron-based imaging of functional composites, with possible application extending to fuel cells, solid-state batteries, and catalytic materials.
The dissertation was written within the “CarboGels” project, a collaboration between the research groups of Dr. Wolfgang Schmidt and Prof. Claudia Weidenthaler at the Kohlenforschung and the Fraunhofer Institute UMSICHT.
The Arbeitskreis Kohlenstoff (AKK) is part of the German Ceramic Society (DKG) and the European Carbon Association (ECA). For over 60 years, it fosters exchange between science and industry in the field of carbon materials.
