Argonne scientists will be part of a new materials research center led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Justin Daugherty and Andre Salles | December 2, 2024

Ten centers across nine states will receive a share of $118 million in funding to advance fundamental energy research.

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory will contribute to a new Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) recently funded by the DOE Office of Science’s Basic Energy Sciences.

Ten centers, some new and some renewed, will receive a share of $118 million in funding to advance fundamental energy research in the areas of advanced microelectronics, manufacturing science, quantum information science and environmental management. 

Among the new centers is APEX, which stands for A Center for Power Electronics Materials and Manufacturing Exploration. The DOE has selected their National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to lead APEX, which will enable expanded materials selection and integration for next-generation power electronics. It will do so through a novel interface and substrate design, coupled with pathways to scalable, low-cost, high-speed manufacturing electronics. 

“The upgraded APS will allow us to probe with more sensitivity and higher throughput. We will not only be able to detect small changes occurring in these materials; we will be able to see the entire process of their evolution.” — Jessica McChesney, Argonne National Laboratory. 

Awarded $13.9 million for four years, APEX joins 33 other existing EFRCs funded by DOE. APEX is a collaboration between NREL, Argonne, Morgan State University, Johns Hopkins University, the Colorado School of Mines, the University of Virginia and Kyma Technologies.

“We’re excited to bring APEX to life and conduct foundational research into the creation of materials that will power major segments of the energy transformation,” said NREL’s Nancy Haegel, senior research advisor and APEX director. ​“APEX has a great team, composed of an interdisciplinary community of scientists driven by the greatest energy challenge of our time: the urgent need to innovate our way to a highly electrified, sustainable and clean energy ecosystem.”

One member of that team is Argonne Physicist Jessica McChesney, who works at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science user facility. The APS is one of the most powerful X-ray light sources in the world, and the APEX team will use those capabilities to understand and design interfaces between the materials used in power electronics.

“The APS provides a wide array of X-ray techniques, including microscopy, spectroscopy and diffraction,” said McChesney, who serves as a co-principal investigator for the characterization portion of APEX. ​“We want to understand the structure-function relationship of these materials both by themselves and in operational devices. Using the non-destructive power of X-ray beams, we can use spectroscopic techniques to understand the physics and chemistry of the materials. With microscopy and diffraction techniques, we can learn more about the spatial distribution of their atoms on both the macroscopic and atomic scales.” 

The APS is in the midst of a comprehensive upgrade, which will include X-ray beams that are up to 500 times brighter. The capabilities of the upgraded APS will enhance all the above techniques, allowing APEX scientists to capture more information about materials and their interfaces than ever before.

“The upgraded APS will allow us to probe with more sensitivity and higher throughput,” McChesney said. ​“We will not only be able to detect small changes occurring in these materials; we will be able to see the entire process of their evolution.”

APEX researchers will drive understanding and advanced manufacturing of potentially transformative materials that will be needed to efficiently power the grid of the future, electrify transportation and enable industrial decarbonization. These applications will create substantial thermal and power loads for the power electronics at the heart of grid infrastructure, creating the need for new materials and innovative devices that can effectively handle such demands. Power electronics are critical to control and convert electrical power.

“Our materials focus will be borides, nitrides, carbides and/or oxides, which hold potential to enable the design of next-generation devices that are smaller and can handle more current,” Haegel said. ​“We need the materials, the devices, the manufacturing and the larger system to evolve together to support the energy transformation. APEX will take a ​‘codesign’ approach, which means that we bring all these challenges together to inform our research from day one.”

Argonne participates in several other EFRCs, some of which were renewed in this latest round of funding. For more information on Argonne’s participation in Energy Frontier Research Centers, visit this web page. 

A version of this release was originally published by NREL.