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An international team of materials researchers including Drexel Univ.’s Yury Gogotsi has given the engineering world a better look at the inner functions of the electrodes of supercapacitors – the low-cost, lightweight energy storage devices used in many electronics, transportation and many other applications. In a piece published in Nature Materials, Gogotsi, and his collaborators from universities in France and England, take another step toward finding a solution to the world’s demand for sustainable energy sources
Gogotsi, a professor in Drexel’s College of Engineering and director of the A.J. Drexel Nanotechnology Institute, teamed with Mathieu Salanne, C?line Merlet and Benjamin Rotenberg from the Universit? Paris, Paul Madden from Oxford Univ. and Patrice Simon and Pierre-Louis Taberna of Universit? Paul Sabatier. What the group has produced is the first quantitative picture of the structure of ionic liquid absorbed inside disordered microporous carbon electrodes in supercapacitors. Supercapacitors have the capability of storing and delivering more power than batteries; moreover, they can last for up to a million of charge-discharge cycles. These characteristics are significant because of the intermittent nature of renewable energy production.
The figure above (Molecular Dynamics simulations by the group of Mathieu Salanne): shows ionic liquid surrounded by two porous carbon electrodes. It explains how the positive (red) and negative (green) ions interact with the carbon surface. The charging mechanism involves the exchange of ions between the bulk and the electrode. This simulation yields much higher capacitance values than in models using simplified regular electrode geometries. Image: Drexel Univ.
According to the researchers, the excellent performance of supercapacitors is due to ion adsorption in porous carbon electrodes. The molecular mechanism of ion behavior in pores smaller than one nanometer-one billionth of a meter- remains poorly understood. The mechanism proposed in this research opens the door for the design of materials with improved energy storage capabilities.
he authors suggest that in order to build higher-performance materials, researchers should know whether the increase in energy storage is due to only a large surface area or if the pore size and geometry also play a role. The results of this study provide guidance for development of better electrical energy storage devices that will ultimately enable wide utilization of renewable energy sources.
“This breakthrough in understanding of energy storage mechanisms became possible due to collaboration between research groups from four universities in three countries,” Gogotsi says. “Moreover, the team used carbon structure models developed by our colleagues Jeremy Palmer and Dr. Keith Gubbins from the North Carolina State Univ. This is a clear demonstration of the importance of collaboration between scientists working in different disciplines and even in different countries.”
This international collaboration is exemplified in the Master Program in Materials for Energy Storage and Conversion (MESC) offered jointly by Universities in France, Poland, Spain, China and the US (Drexel Univ.), in which students spent four semesters studying in at least three different countries and obtaining important international experience, in addition to knowledge in the energy field. Currently, 3 MESC students perform their master thesis research at Drexel.
Here we demonstrate a new developed method for depositing Ti3C2Tx MXenes onto hydrophobic electrospun PCL membranes using oxygen plasma treatment. These novel patches hold tremendous potential for providing mechanical support to damaged heart tissue and enabling electrical signal transmission,thereby mimicking the crucial electroconductivity required for normal cardiac function. After a detailed investigation of scaffold-to-cell interplay, including electrical stimulation, novel technology has the potential for clinical application not only for cardiac regeneration, but also as neural and muscular tissue substitutes.
MX-MAP project participants from MRC Dr. Oleksiy Gogotsi and Veronika Zahorodna performed split secondment visit to project partner organization University of Padova (Italy). MX-MAP project works on development of the key strategies for MXene medical applications. 
CanbioSe Project Meeting and Project Workshop was held at European Institute of Membranes (IEM), University of Montpellier, France on September 26-27, 2023. The workshop was focused on the theme of "Commercializing Biosensors, Intellectual Property, and Knowledge Transfer from Academia to Industry.
Dr. Oleksiy Gogotsi and Veronika Zahorodna visited IEEE NAP 2023 conference held in Bratislava on September 10-15, 2023. The prime focus of the IEEE NAP-2023 was on nanoscale materials with emphasis on interdisciplinary research exploring and exploiting their unique physical and chemical proprieties for practical applications.
Director of MRC and Carbon-Ukraine Dr. Oleksiy Gogotsi visited CEST labs in Wiener Neustadt (Low Energy Ion Scattering, Batteries development) and TU Vienna (ELSA, SFA). He meet with Dr. Pierluigi Bilotto, Dr. Chriatian Pichler and their colleagues, discussing novel materials and r&d activities for new technologies.
MX-MAP Session was held during the YUCOMAT Conference 2023 titled: "Towards MXenes’ biomedical applications by high-dimensional immune MAPping", HORIZON-MSCA-2021-SE-01 project MX-MAP.
CANBIOSE project participants from MRC Dr. Oleksiy Gogotsi and Veronika Zahorodna performed secondment visit to project partner organization European Institute of Membranes in Montpellier (France) on August -September 2023.
MRC researchers Dr. Oleksiy Gogotsi and Veronika Zahorodna were visiting Nanobiomedical Centre, Adam Mickewicz University in Poznan, Poland due to close collaboration with AMU team led by Dr. Igor Iatsunskiy. 
Meeting during the MXene international conference held in Drexel University on Aug. 3, 2022, and discussing the roadmap for launching MX-MAP research project on MXenes for medical applications.