Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Solid State Dielectric Supercapacitors based on Amorphous SnOx/SnyTi1-yO2/TizAl1-zO1.5+0.5z Artificial Dielectric Lattice for Energy Storage and Power Electronics" "Christophe Detavernier" "Department of Solid State Sciences" "Inferior energy storage density (ESD) of device is now the major factor hindering capacitors to serve as primary sources in renewable energy, electric vehicles and electronics. Recently, dielectric-based solid capacitors are achieving excellent ESD and high working voltage in tiny dimensions, emerging as a powerful competitor to electrochemical supercapacitors in the race to higher capacity, but yet unable to be scaled to larger size for devices. Our previous study has shown that one dimensional electron-based artificial dielectric lattice (EADL) consisting of alternating n-type semiconducting/insulating sublayers is a promising candidate for advanced dielectrics. Moreover, its periodic structure grown by Atomic Layer Deposition makes it perfectly scalable in both area and thickness, raising the possibility of transferring it to high aspect ratio nanostructures. In this project, we propose a totally new type of dielectric supercapacitor building on a novel ternary SnOx/SnyTi1-yO2/TizAl1-zO1.5+0.5z (SST)-EADL and nanoporous metal electrodes. Band engineering and gradient composition are introduced in SST-EADLs to tune interface potential structure and secure high quality interfaces, which jointly suppress strong local field and achieve high breakdown strength. The SST-EADLs supercapacitors combining advanced dielectrics and large electrode area, are expected to show high ESD and working voltage, fast charging rate, long cycling life and excellent environmental adaptability." "The Development of Supercapacitors Based on Self-assembled Electrodes using Polypyrrole, Cellulose Nanocrystals, and Commonly used Inorganic Salts" "Wim Thielemans" "Chemical Engineering, Kulak Kortrijk Campus" "My research topic is the development of supercapacitors based on self-assembled electrodes using polypyrrole (PPy), cellulose nanocrystals, and commonly used inorganic salts. The counterion level of PPy is around 0.3-0.5, which will affect the PPy film electrodes' structure and electrochemical performance. In my research, I mainly focus on studying the effects of counterions' size (small ions from inorganic salts and polyanions-cellulose nanocrystals), type, and concentration on the final PPy supercapacitors. The formation mechanism of porous PPyCNC-salts electrodes was explored." "Structural supercapacitors; composite materials for high-density energy storage." "Martine Wevers" "Structural Composites and Alloys, Integrity and Nondestructive Testing (SCALINT), Electronic Circuits and Systems (ECS)" "The main goal of this PhD research is to develop and optimize composite materials to be used as structural supercapacitors. Furthermore, those structural composites possess the additional functionality of very high capacitance. The resulting materials will thus be multifunctional components to be applied in diverse engineering structures.The use of a capacitor for energy storage offers numerous advantages. The (dis)charging of a capacitor is extremely fast and the lifetime is quasi unlimited as no electrolyte that degrades over time is involved. Moreover, a capacitor is light and contains no rare earth elements. The reason why a capacitor is until now seldomly used as an alternative for a electrochemical battery is due to two difficulties. Firstly, the capacitor voltage decreases significantly as energy is taken from it. This poses a problem for applications using the stored electrical energy at a constant supply voltage. Secondly, the energy density of a capacitor is still lower than that of a traditional electrochemical battery. This research project is addressing both difficulties. It aims at finding a cheap, light, reliable and flexible capacitive energy storage with composite materials. Multifunctional composite materials for energy storage(M(ultifunctional)E(nergy)S(torage)composites) offer a unique integration method, which allows to embed the functional capacitor materials into structural carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRPs). In this concept, the composite material is not only the structural component, but it also realizes the storage capacitor. As such, it uses the same material to store energy. A lot of research is needed to find the ideal materials of such a multifunctional composite material for energy storage. Potential materials to be addressed are carbon fibers as electrode material and a thin dielectricum with ceramic nanoparticles embedded in a high k polymer. This PhD proposes a multidisciplinary approach to develop structural supercapacitors which will find their applications in a wide variety of sectors (automotive, aerospace, …) for which the need for a separate electrochemical battery will be eliminated. These structural supercapacitors are thus essential to the reduction of fossil-based fuels by saving on structural weight and by the application of innovative electrical hybrid concepts into structural materials." "Development of High-performance Biobased Supercapacitors" "Wim Thielemans" "Chemical Engineering, Kulak Kortrijk Campus" "Previous work has shown that the best-performing negative electrodes in asymmetric capacitors are based on carbon materials with a high specific surface area. However, little is known about the optimal structure and surface chemistry. Therefore, we will prepare negative electrode materials by controlled pyrolysis of nanostructured networks of polysaccharides. This network will be create by tuning the initial composition of hemicelluloses and polysaccharide nanocrystals (rodlike cellulose or chitin nanocrystals, starch nanoplatelets) nano- and micro fibrillated cellulose together. Chemical or physical activation and pyrolysis conditions will be used to carefully control the hierarchical structure, pore dimensions, and surface chemistry to pinpoint the ideal structure in a very systematic way." "Ordered Nanoporous Carbon Architectures from Biobased Building Blocks" "Veerle Vandeginste" "Surface and Interface Engineered Materials (SIEM)" "Ordered nanoporous carbons are gaining appreciable interest in several green technology applications (efficient charge storage, metal-free carbocatalysis). Nevertheless, at present they can only be fabricated using fossil fuel-based building blocks, through energy-intensive processes with large ecological footprint, and with potential environmental pollution. The overall aim of this project is to provide more sustainable alternatives to these fossil fuel-derived materials by fabricating ordered nanoporous carbons from biobased constituents. Our project will focus on studying biobased polymer-biobased surfactant supramolecular assemblies (objective 1) to develop a soft-templating system using only biobased building blocks (objective 2), for obtaining various ordered nanoporous carbons (objective 3) and apply them in charge storage systems (supercapacitors, objective 4), and for metal-free carbocatalysis (advanced oxidation process, objective 5). Our goal is to have control on the nanoarchitecture and understand structure-performance relationships in applications in order to obtain cutting-edge, high-performance materials for advanced devices. Our novel bottom-up approach will give the first biobased soft-templating method to make ordered nanoporous carbons, and is expected to open up new research directions for sustainable material solutions. This project will provide materials and processes with reduced ecological footprint over existing products and technologies, contributing to a sustainable economic growth and to the realisation of a resilient society." "Design of energy harvesting and energy-aware systems for low power wireless sensors." "Maarten Weyn" "Internet Data Lab (IDLab)" "Current Internet of Things (IoT) devices are not designed to be sustainable. For example, large batteries are often equipped to guarantee that sensing and transmitting tasks can be performed at fixed intervals for years on end. This significantly affects the form factor, cost, and ecological footprint of IoT devices. In this project, we will design and develop sustainable systems that are able to harvest various renewable energy sources , including but not limited to solar, thermal and kinetic energy. The system will consist of (1) a power management module that includes energy harvesting hardware and energy storage units (i.e. batteries or supercapacitors), (2) sensors for environmental monitoring, (3) a low-power microcontroller unit (MCU) and (4) a low power communication module. Additionally, we will implement intelligent algorithms on this system to make it energy-aware. This will allow the system to adapt its behaviour based on its current and future available energy, effectively improving its reliability and energy efficiency. The sustainable system has a broad application potential, ranging from solar-powered air quality measurement units in Belgium to low-power thermal energy harvesting devices for climate research in Iceland. In this project, we will evaluate our sustainable system with the latter use case." "Optimisation of Hybrid PEMFC Systems for UAVs" "Frank Buysschaert" "Surface and Interface Engineered Materials (SIEM), Applied Mechanics and Energy conversion (TME)" "PEM fuel cells can be used for mobile applications. However, there are challenges associated with this, such as limited power density and limited dynamic response. Research into hybrid systems can offer a solution to this. In a hybrid fuel cell system, the fuel cell is combined with batteries, (super)capacitors... to meet load profiles. Therefore, research into modelling and characterisation of energy systems for hybridisation is necessary to efficiently size systems. In addition, the models can help to provide insights into degradation to improve fuel cell lifetimes." "IoBaLeT: Sustainable Internet of Battery-Less Things" "Eli De Poorter" "Department of Information technology" "IoBaLeT: Sustainable Internet of Battery-Less Things1) Summary of scientific goalsIoBaLeT aims to bring the performance (i.e. throughput, scalability and range) of battery-less IoTnetworks on-par with its battery-powered counterparts, by enabling active rather than passivecommunications and computing. An end-to-end networking solution for battery-less IoT will bedeveloped that will achieve this goal through inter-device cooperation and cross-layer energyawareness.It will consume at most 5% of the available memory, CPU and energy resources. IoBaLeTpursues 4 scientific objectives:[S1] Accurate energy prediction models to estimate the short-term energy budget of a device,encompassing the interplay between energy storage (e.g., (super)capacitors or hybrid capacitors),harvesting (e.g., voltaic, piezo, electromagnetic) and consumption (e.g., computing, radio,peripherals) processes. We target an average energy consumption and harvesting predictionaccuracy of 90% based on detailed pre-generated hardware benchmarks, and 80% forbenchmarking-free predictions over a time window of up to 10 minutes.[S2] Hardware design (i.e., antennas, rectifiers) and multi-antenna transmission techniques forhighly efficient cooperative SWIPT, able to transmit 1mW of DC power in a single hop in a 5x5x3mroom in both line-of-sight (LoS) and non-LoS conditions. Receiver rectenna efficiency > 40% in theinput power range of -10 to 10 dBm. Downlink throughput in line with IoT technologies (Bluetooth,Zigbee) with a power conversion efficiency loss < 5%. This will be extended to a hybrid harvestingsolution, combining SWIPT with solar and vibration energy to achieve 10mW harvested power.[S3] Scalable channel access and routing protocols for multi-hop SWIPT-enabled battery-less IoTnetworks, able to handle the unpredictable intermittently-powered behaviour of battery-lessdevices. These protocols should support at least 1000 devices connected to an access point over 1or more hops and should be able to achieve an end-to-end latency bound of 30 seconds, at a packetdelivery ratio of 99.9%, assuming 3 routing hops and 1mW energy harvesting efficiency.[S4] Energy-aware task scheduler for intermittent devices that intelligently decides whichapplication and network tasks to execute at which time, considering task deadlines, data freshness,expected energy consumption of interconnected tasks and available and expected harvestedenergy. The task execution failure rate is targeted to be at most 5%. A reduction to 2% is expectedwhen cooperatively scheduling tasks across battery-less and cloud edge devices.  " "Inkjet Printing of a Photosupercapacitor for Indoor Light Energy Harvesting and Storage on a Smart Contact Lens" "Francisco Molina Lopez" "Surface and Interface Engineered Materials (SIEM)" "Efficient energy management systems could enable the development of smart contact lenses that can regulate vision and measure physiological signals. Current operational batteries are too bulky to be comfortable for the user and thus to be used for such an application. Therefore, an alternative in the form of photosupercapacitors is proposed, integrating an energy harvesting part and an energy storage part. The former will be composed of a highly-efficient organic photovoltaic (OPV) system, converting light from indoor sources into electricity. This electricity will be stored directly in a micro-supercapacitor (uSC), which shall form the energy storage part. Together, the system is expected to provide sufficient power (~0.18mW) for the operation of microelectronic devices. To achieve the fabrication of such a system, the technique of inkjet printing (IJP) will be used, leveraging its advantages of high patterning accuracy and low cost. The project will proceed through the independent fabrication of an OPV and a uSC, followed by their integration onto a contact lens. At a fundamental level, it is expected to shed light on the relationship between the particular morphology of the IJP active layer of the device and its performance, enabling fine-tuning of the manufacturing process for device optimisation." "EMerging TECHNOlogies inMultiport Systems forEnergy Efficient Drivetrains" "Joeri Van Mierlo" "Departement Elektrotechniek (ESAT), EEDT-MP, MOBI, MotionS" "EMTechno project aims at improving the total cost of ownership (TCO) of energy-efficient drivetrains by the integration of the following emerging technologies: Electric Variable Transmissions (EVT), Multiport Converters (MPC) and Wide-Bandgap Semiconductor (WBS). In general, the drivetrains (i.e. vehicle propulsion, weaving looms, header of a harvester, shock absorbers…) in Flanders industry consist of a number of subsystems that could be divided into two major groups (or a combination thereof):1. Subsystems with a combination of mechanical (electrical machines, flywheels, load…) and electrical ports (DC-bus, batteries, supercapacitors…);2. Subsystems with only electrical ports (grid, batteries, supercapacitors, fuel cells, 12V or 24V for auxiliaries…).In order to enhance the efficiency, cost and compactness of these types of drivetrains, this project will focus on the design, control and integration of the following integrated multiport power-conversion subsystems:1. Electromechanical multiport: Electric Variable Transmissions (EVT);2. Electrical multiport: Advanced Multiport Converters (MPC).In addition, Wide-Bandgap Semiconductor (WBS) based switches (i.e. Silicon Carbide (SiC) and Gallium Nitride (GaN)) will be designed and integrated in the MPC and in the inverters of the EVT in order to increase their energy efficiency. Finally, on a system level, approaches for optimal energy management and integrated design of drivetrains with such multiport subsystems will be developed and experimentally demonstrated for development cases that are representative for the companies in the user group."