Advancing Materials Innovation for Batteries and Supercapacitors: A joint EMPHASIS-INERRANT workshop

Athens, June 04th 2025

Last week the Greek capital hosted a joint workshop of the two H-EU projects INERRANT and EMPHASIS, which aimed not only to address the common research and application fields on material innovations for electrochemical energy storage systems, but also strengthen the collaboration between partners of both consortia – identifying synergies between the two projects. More than 30 participants attended the workshop both onsite and online.

The workshop opened with a welcome speech by Spyros Yannopoulos (FORTH, coordinator of the INERRANT project) and Athanasios Masouras (PLEIONE, coordinator of the EMPHASIS project), who introduced the objectives and agenda of the event. The first session, moderated by FORTH, dealt with the materials processing and integration of the fabrication processes of graphene for supercapacitors and batteries. The key challenges in laser-assisted production were highlighted. PLEIONE continued by presenting the integration of material components from lab to demonstrator while emphasizing on the scalability and practical applications. This led to a compelling presentation made by University of Würzburg, highlighting the challenges in electrolyte identification and production as well as solutions and innovations to overcome them. To conclude this first session, the exploration of biobased materials and their potential benefits and drawbacks as well as the sustainability and scalability of biobased materials were presented by WOOD K and discussed with the audience.

The second session, moderated by PLEIONE, focused on testing, validating, and the perspectives it provides. An overview of the current validation methods for testing batteries and supercapacitors presented by Keysight shed light on the importance of accurate testing for performance and safety. INRIM on the other hand offered a glimpse into metrological tools and their role in enhancing supercapacitor technologies, as well as their challenges in measurement. The insights provided by UCD gave the audience a good overview on how the role of the Faraday Institution within the UK participates in the research for safer and more sustainable batteries through their work on battery materials. Lastly, the focus shifted to sustainability and alternatives, where WOOD K showed the latest developments in sustainable and alternative materials for supercapacitors and their environmental impact while UJEP provided the audience with a discussion on second-life battery processes and their contribution to sustainability. The workshop ended with a roundtable discussing future synergies, with both projects expressing interest in producing joint publications on the outcomes of the workshop and their respective results.