Proceedings of MATSUS Spring 2025 Conference (MATSUSSpring25)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.matsusspring.2025.391
Publication date: 16th December 2024
Li-ion battery (LIB) technology is a cornerstone of the transition to a carbon-neutral economy, powering advancements in renewable energy storage and electric mobility. While LIBs have been transformative, achieving full environmental and economic sustainability requires addressing challenges across the entire value chain, including the recycling of spent Li-ion batteries (SLIBs). Current industrial recycling processes primarily focus on recovering valuable cathode metals from the black mass. However, graphite, a critical raw material present in significant quantities in SLIBs, is largely discarded, despite its designation as a critical material by the EU. To fully capitalize on the circular economy potential of LIBs, innovative strategies for the recovery and upcycling of spent graphite are urgently needed.
Recycling graphite from black mass leach residue faces significant challenges due to impurities, structural defects, and contaminants that make traditional recycling methods economically unfeasible. This presentation outlines a novel approach utilizing hydrometallurgically-leached black mass residue as a raw material for producing bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts. By exploiting the residual metal content and defects in the waste graphite we are able to turn a disposal challenge into an opportunity for creating high-value materials. Our research [1, 2] demonstrates the potential of SLIB recycling residue as a sustainable resource for high-performance M-N-C catalyst materials. These novel catalysts, tested in Zn-air batteries, show high power density and long cycling stability, highlighting their applicability in next-generation energy devices, offering a pathway toward mitigating climate change while advancing the circular economy for battery technologies.
This research has been supported by the Estonian Research Council (PSG926), as well as the Business Finland BatCircle2.0 (Grant Number 44886/31/2020) project. In addition, this work was funded by the Ministry of Education and Research through the Centre of Excellence in Circular Economy for Strategic Mineral and Carbon Resources (01.01.2024–31.12.2030, TK228). And the Academy of Finland’s RawMatTERS Finland Infrastructure (RAMI) based at Aalto University and the OtaNano – Nanomicroscopy Center (Aalto-NMC) were utilized as part of this research.
nanoGe is a prestigious brand of successful science conferences that are developed along the year in different areas of the world since 2009. Our worldwide conferences cover cutting-edge materials topics like perovskite solar cells, photovoltaics, optoelectronics, solar fuel conversion, surface science, catalysis and two-dimensional materials, among many others.
Previously nanoGe Spring Meeting (NSM) and nanoGe Fall Meeting (NFM), MATSUS is a multiple symposia conference focused on a broad set of topics of advanced materials preparation, their fundamental properties, and their applications, in fields such as renewable energy, photovoltaics, lighting, semiconductor quantum dots, 2-D materials synthesis, charge carriers dynamics, microscopy and spectroscopy semiconductors fundamentals, etc.
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV) is celebrated yearly in May. The main topics are the development, function and modeling of materials and devices for hybrid and organic solar cells. The field is now dominated by perovskite solar cells but also other hybrid technologies, as organic solar cells, quantum dot solar cells, and dye-sensitized solar cells and their integration into devices for photoelectrochemical solar fuel production.
Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics
The main topics of the Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics (IPEROP) are discussed every year in Asia-Pacific for gathering the recent advances in the fields of material preparation, modeling and fabrication of perovskite and hybrid and organic materials. Photovoltaic devices are analyzed from fundamental physics and materials properties to a broad set of applications. The conference also covers the developments of perovskite optoelectronics, including light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.
The International Conference on Perovskite Thin Film Photovoltaics Perovskite Photonics and Optoelectronics (NIPHO) is the best place to hear the latest developments in perovskite solar cells as well as on recent advances in the fields of perovskite light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.