A research consortium led by Bath University’s Professor Saiful Islam has been awarded £3.2 million by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council to work on new sustainable materials for energy storage and conversion.

The grant will fund a five-year project entitled Energy materials: computational solutions to develop new materials for the next generation of ‘green’-energy devices, including solar cells, lithium batteries, thermo-electrics and fuel cells.

Other members of the consortium team include the university’s Professor Steve Parker and Dr Aron Walsh, as well as Professors Richard Catlow and Nora de Leeuw from University College London and Dr Paul Sherwood from the Daresbury Laboratory. The team also has strong links with industrial partners, including Johnson Matthey and Sharp.

Professor Islam, who works at Bath’s Department of Chemistry, said: “Developing new sustainable materials holds the key to cheaper and more-efficient solar cells for homes and rechargeable batteries for electric cars, which will help to reduce carbon emissions.

“The research team will develop and apply powerful techniques for modelling the atomic-level operation of energy materials. Such fresh insights could unlock the door to new families of compounds with a ‘step change’ in efficiency and performance.”

Professor Parker added: “This is an exciting opportunity. There is no equivalent project inter-linking such expertise being carried out elsewhere, so it could lead to major breakthroughs in the energy field.”