Plenary Speaker
Michael H. Eikerling
Modeling and Simulation of Materials in Energy Technology (IEK-13)
Institute of Energy and Climate Research
Forschungszentrum Jülich
52425 Jülich, Germany
Email: m.eikerling@fz-juelich.de
Short Biography
Prof. Michael Eikerling received his Ph.D. in Physics from Technische Universität München (TUM). As of May 2019, he was appointed Professor at RWTH Aachen University and Director at the new subinstitute for Modeling and Simulation of Materials in Energy Technology (IEK-13) within Forschungszentrum Jülich. His research employs physical theory and computation to unravel how materials in polymer electrolyte fuel cells and other electrochemical technologies form, function, fade and fail. He has published over 130 journal articles (h-index 36) and 1 book. In 2017, Dr. Eikerling was awarded the Alexander Kuznetsov Prize for Theoretical Electrochemistry of the International Society of Electrochemistry. He serves on editorial boards of Scientific Reports and Electrocatalysis and engages in affairs of the international electrochemical community.
“Fundamental Challenges in Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells:
Advances through Theory and Modeling”
The growing demand for highly efficient and environmentally benign energy technologies drives research on electrochemical materials. In this realm, theory, modeling, and simulation are contributing powerful methods and tools to study how complex multifunctional materials come to life during self-organization, how they live and work, and how they age and fail. The presentation will scrutinize a hierarchy of interrelated scientific challenges that determine cost, performance and lifetime of polymer electrolyte fuel cells. It will provide an account of recent advances in the development of first principles methods in electrocatalysis, the modeling and simulation of reaction conditions at mesoscopic interfacial regions between catalyst/support surface and ionomer skin layer, and the comprehensive modeling of complex water phenomena that couple processes across cell components and scales. The presented tools and analyses bolster efforts in materials selection, structural design and testing as well as overall performance improvement and evaluation.