Photo Thermal Management Materials

Project Information

PHOTHERM

Grant agreement ID: 101002131

DOI

10.3030/101002131

EC signature date 11 March 2021

Start date 1 February 2022

End date 31 January 2027

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 000 000,00

EU contribution

€ 2 000 000,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE CATALUNYA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - PHOTHERM (Photo Thermal Management Materials)

Reporting period: 2024-07-01 to 2025-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Since the beginning of civilization, humanity has built houses to sustain comfortable living conditions throughout the seasons. In our modern society, about 50% of the total energy consumption is used for heating and cooling. Growing demands for thermal management in many different sectors, from electronics to housing, inevitably mean increased energy consumption. The primary source of heat is coming from the combustion of fossil, bio or waste-based feedstocks, all contributing to carbon emissions.
This project seeks to fundamentally change how we generate heating and cooling by developing a new class of materials that capture, store, and release both solar and ambient heat. These solar thermal management materials are a unique combination of molecular photo-switches that capture and store solar energy, so-called MOST systems, that together with phase change materials (PCM) can contribute to thermal management. The two classes of materials operate at fundamentally different principles. The input of MOST system is photons, and the output is heat whereas PCM can absorb heat from the environment. By combining the two materials into one, we can harness and upgrade two of the most abundant renewable sources of energy on the planet: ambient heat and sunlight.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project has seen progress in several areas related to the development of more advanced MOST materials. In this period, one of the main results were the hybrid device that stored chemical energy in MOST system, and converted it to electricity on demand:

There is an urgent need for alternative compact technologies that can derive and store energy from the sun, especially the large amount of solar heat that is not effectively used for power generation. Here, we report a combination of solution- and neat-film-based molecular solar thermal (MOST) systems, where solar energy can be stored as chemical energy and released as heat, with microfabricated thermoelectric generators to produce electricity when solar radiation is not available. The photophysical properties of two MOST couples are characterized both in liquid with a catalytical cycling setup and in a phase-interconvertible neat film. Their suitable photophysical properties let us combine them individually with a microelectromechanical ultrathin thermoelectric chip to use the stored solar energy for electrical power generation. The generator can produce, as a proof of concept, a power output of up to 0.1 nW (power output per unit volume up to 1.3 W m−3). Our results demonstrate that such a molecular thermal power generation system has a high potential to store and transfer solar power into electricity and is thus potentially independent of geographical restrictions.

the work was published in Cell Press Physical Science. DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2022.100789

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project has realised several new molecular materials systems with beyond state of the art performance. The most important results so far has been related to the interplay between temperature and efficiency of electric devices. One example is the hybrid thermo electric generation (TEG) -molecular solar thermal (MOST) device that was the first of its kind, another example was the hybrid MOST - photovoltaic device that lead to increased performance of the photovoltaic due to better thermal management. This work was published during the summer of 2024 in the journal Joule.