Institute of Advanced Studies

Challenges in Materials Science for Sustainable Energy

by Professor Klaus Ploog, Paul Drude Institute, Germany

Energy and materials have a long-standing and mutually enriching relationship. In this talk Professor Ploog will show that materials science offers unique possibilities to improve key properties of energy supplies.       

In the long term, materials science will help to promote the use of revolutionary new energy resources, such as hydrogen and fusion, and of new energy storage technologies.

In this lecture Professor Ploog gave a short overview on energy flows and energy cycles and will briefly outline the correlation between energy resources, energy use and environmental impacts (greenhouse gas effect). He will then discuss some currently used energy resources (coal, oil, natural gas) and the material technology requirements for sustainability. The talk then moves to emerging energy resources (wind energy, solar energy) and the challenges in materials R&D to make these resources viable. Finally, the material issues of some long term opportunities (hydrogen fuel) and of electrical energy storage will be outlined.

When we analyse the energy challenges of today, it becomes clear that running out of resources does not emerge as the major worry, as coal will last for about 150 years and oil and natural gas for about 70 years to come. Yet there is another worry that is becoming more insidious and urgent - green house (CO2) gas emissions. Today, energy production from any of the available resources results in considerable CO2 production. Hence, we also must reduce our energy consumption, such as by cutting the energy use in buildings, which accounts for 40% of primary energy use and 70% of electricity use in developed countries, through the application of advanced materials for insulation, heating, cooling and electricity supply.

This lecture is co-sponsored with the Microelectronics Research Group at UWA and the joint WA IEEE Electron Device/Solid State Circuits/Photonics’ Chapter.

About Professor Klaus Ploog

Klaus H. Ploog is one of the pioneers of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), a versatile tool to fabricate semiconductor and metal nanostructures, which has been established in the 1970s,  long before the hype on ‘Nano’ started to dominate the word-wide research funding policies in the late 1990s. Using molecular beam epitaxy, he has designed and fabricated numerous new semiconductor and magnetic nanostructures which have shown unique quantum size effects and which have led to a number of novel device concepts.

His current interest for the subject of his lecture evolved from his research on Group-III Nitrides for solid-state lighting, where he paved the way for more efficient blue, green and violet Nitride LEDs by using non-polar layers and heterostructures. 

Professor Ploog is associated with the Paul Drude Institute for Solid State Electronics in Berlin and has held senior research positions with The Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Darmstadt University of Technology, Humboldt University and world-wide visiting professorships.

13 October 2009