Future Batteries
FUELED BY THE SUN
From foundational materials research and energy conversion to devices and design principles – the SolBat Center in Munich pioneers the future of solar batteries and optoionic technologies.
What is the SolBat Center?
Solar batteries unite a solar cell and a battery within one device. The SolBat Center drives this innovative bridge technology between energy conversion and storage, explores the operating optoionic principles and translates them into first prototypes.
Its objectives span the entire value chain from fundamental research on optoionics and new energy materials, through device design and techno-economic assessment, up to the development of sustainable and scalable production processes.
Our vision
Establish solar batteries as innovative energy storage concept
Achieve full vertical integration from fundamentals to devices
Form world-leading think tank on optoionic technologies
Steps to success
First-class lab and computing infrastructure
AI-driven accelerated development
Unique interdisciplinary expertise
Why do solar batteries matter?
Solar energy forms the backbone of a future sustainable energy provision. To address the intermittency of solar irradiation, flexible energy storage solutions are required. Solar batteries can chemically store the energy from sunlight directly – without the detour of converting it into electricity as in solar cells.
This provides intriguing possibilities for light buffering or light-accelerated charging at significantly increased efficiencies.
What is so special about Optoionics?
The road to self-driving AI labs
Optoionic processes are essentially unexplored. To overcome traditional decade-long R&D cycles, the SolBat Center makes consistent use of modern AI technologies. Strong acceleration will come from tight feedback loops between data-driven materials prediction, AI-based data analyses and robotic material synthesis and optimization. With AIs taking over the experiment planning, the Center realizes a world-unique self-driving laboratory that translates fundamental insight into device prototypes at unprecedented pace.
Strong ecosystem = excellent results
The SolBat Center is an equal strategic cooperation between the TU Munich (TUM) and the Max Planck Society, funded by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs. Situated at the Garching campus, it benefits from an outstanding energy research landscape, such as the TUM Walter Schottky Institute (Center for Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials), the TUMint.Energy Research GmbH (Center for Applied Battery Research) and the German Research Foundation funded Cluster of Excellence e-conversion. This unique ecosystem concentrates expertise, infrastructure and networks in all relevant areas and all technology readiness levels.
A strong core team of interdisciplinary experts
The three heads of the SolBat Center bundle world-leading expertise in computational and AI-based modeling and simulation, data processing, experimental materials development and analysis of optoionic effects, as well as device design for energy storage and conversion.
