Professor Magda Titirici – Sustainable Materials for a Net Zero Future

The global energy demand is increasing and finding new sustainable energy alternatives to fossil fuels is now critically important. In order to develop sustainable materials for a fossil-free energy future, Professor Magda Titirici’s research group focuses on renewable resources, carbon materials and benign processing methods, such as hydrothermal carbonization and electrospinning. Her presentation discussed the research in her lab based around green batteries and green catalysis for energy applications.

The development of effective and sustainable energy storage systems for non-continuous solar and wind power is imperative. Professor Titirici’s group is developing novel and sustainable carbon materials to be used in Na-ion batteries, Na-metal batteries, Li-S batteries, mixed-ion systems and also in supercapacitors. They produce hard carbons for ion storage from two main feedstocks, biomass-derived products and plastic waste, as well as porous carbon materials with tailored porosity, functionality and electronic conductivity for supercapacitors from low-cost and renewable bio-waste precursors.

Research in electrocatalysis covers areas such as improving the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in fuel cells, electrochemical nitrogen reduction to produce ammonia, electrochemical CO2 reduction to produce high value-added chemical, an alcohol and biomass electrolysis.
Their green research also covers the use of carbon nanodots as photocatalysts to harvest solar energy and use it to synthesize fuels and chemicals.

About Professor Magda Titirici

Professor Magda Titirici received her PhD in Materials Chemistry from the University of Dortmund in Germany. In 2008, she started her independent research on sustainable carbon materials. She then moved to Queen Mary University of London as a Reader in Materials Science and was promoted to Full Professor in 2014, followed by a move to Imperial College in January 2019 to take up a Chair in Sustainable Energy Materials.
Professor Titirici is the author of over 350 articles and is included in the Global Highly Cited Researchers (Clarivate Analytics) over the past six years. Some of her current research interests involve sustainable materials with focus on carbon and carbon hybrids produced via hydrothermal processes, waste recycling into advance products and avoidance of critical elements in renewable energy technologies.