Symposium EN01-Advances in Critical Materials for Energy Efficiency

Critical minerals and materials are essential for modern technologies and global energy efficiency, in particular with respect to ensuring a secure supply chain. A list of technologically relevant minerals has been deemed critical not only by the US government but global agencies including the European Commission and the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). These minerals, including rare earth elements (REE), platinum group elements (PGE), semiconductor metals (Ga/Ge), battery metals (lithium, nickel, graphite), electrical metals (e.g., copper), and others are necessary for technological advancements in the twenty-first century. Reliance on these hard to source materials drives its own materials science challenge, demanding a synergistic approach across a range of topics, including geology, mining, separations, materials design and development of cutting-edge, and economically viable technologies from bench scale all the way to industrially relevant commercial production. This symposium covers topics such as challenges in mining and separation of critical materials from both ores and unconventional sources, as well as energy efficient materials design and material substitution in advanced technologies across a wide range of materials including REE, PGE, semiconductor metals, battery metals, and other critical minerals and materials.

• Chemical processing of critical mineral extraction and recovery
• Recycling of critical materials from end of life components
• Recovery of critical minerals from unconventional sources
• Designing energy materials with less critical and more abundant elements
• Designing recyclable energy material and devices
• Artificial intelligence for accelerating the critical mineral processing and supply
• Life cycle analysis in critical mineral extraction and recovery
• Functional and structural materials with critical materials
• Alloy design and development
• Modeling and Simulation

• Lana Alagha (Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA)
• Santiago Cuesta (International Center for Advanced Materials and Raw Materials, Spain)
• Christopher Dares (Florida International University, USA)
• George P. Demopoulos (McGill University, Canada)
• Emma Kendrick (University of Birmingham, United Kingdom)
• Eunjeong Kim (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA)
• Yize Li (California State University, Bakersfield, USA)
• Atsuko Masuya- Suzuki (Yamaguchi University, Japan)
• Ikenna Nlebedim (Ames National Laboratory, USA)
• Elsa Olivetti (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
• Ester Palmero (IMDEA Nanociencia, Spain)
• Long Qi (Ames National Laboratory, USA)
• Julie Staunton (University of Warwick, United Kingdom)
• Anja Waske (Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und-prüfung, Germany)
• Michael Whittaker (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA)