Chemistry and Materials for Energy | MOST – IMCN UCLouvain

News

Honoured to see our group mentioned in the Chemistry World opinion piece “Building better batteries with chemistry’s toolbox.” 🙏

Huge thanks to NRJ team — postdocs, doctoral researchers, master & visiting students, and our administrative/technical staff — your ambition and hard work make challenging projects possible.

Read more: https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/building-better-batteries-with-chemistrys-toolbox/4022120.article

🎉 Nice to see our work featured as a Back Cover in Energy & Environmental Science.

🔗 http://xlink.rsc.org/?DOI=D5EE02567B

🙌 While Mg-ion and Ca-ion containing high voltage cathodes was widely considered very challenging — some saying even impossible — we realized it through careful host design, electrolyte engineering, and chemical intuition.

🏁 The race is on now:

• Who can deliver even better cathodes?

• Who will develop truly high-voltage electrolytes for divalent-metal batteries?

We’re excited to see (and help drive) what comes next. 🚀

Is the “Graphite: the new critical mineral.” ?
In collaboration with Prof. P. M. Ajayan (Rice University), we examine graphite’s central role in Li-ion anodes and outline routes to a sustainable supply—greener synthesis from renewable/waste carbon, efficient recycling of spent anodes, and supportive policy/market frameworks.

Proud of this Rice–UCLouvain partnership.

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41578-025-00848-5

Many updates just added across our Publications page — new papers, perspectives, and cover features.

Check the latest here: https://vladgroup.org/publications/ — and stay tuned, more coming soon!

Research

Vlad NRJ Group research has primarily focus on design and synthesis of materials and architectures to address the new challenges arising in the field of electrochemical energy storage and conversion. Due to the unique combination of research background in organic materials and inorganic nanomaterials, our group develops interest in novel electrolyte chemistries and interfacial transport phenomena; alkali metal batteries and SEI studies; along with synthesis and electrochemistry of exotic inorganic phases for alkali and alkali earth cation storage.

Teaching

Teaching has the ability to carve out future careers and to support shaping ideas about society, life and personal goals. It can also help expand students’ limits by stimulating their creativity. Teaching implies a huge responsibility because of it’s decisive impact in people’s life.

Facilities

The Laboratory of Energy Materials and Devices at the University catholique de Louvain is headed by Prof. Vlad. The lab occupies an area of ~300 m2 in wings A.3 and B.2, Lavoisier Building. This space is compartmentalized into two materials synthesis labs and several device characterization labs, all conforming to the highest safety standards.
We have a strong battery and supercapacitor expertise with facilities ranging from materials synthesis and fundamental characterization to advance device manufacture and testing.

State-of-art equipment and tools for complex synthesis, sophisticated processing and advanced analysis are available for research and service.

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