It's all about transitions - dealing sustainably and reliably with critical metal oxides in simulations and technologies

Speaker: Prof. Lucio Colombi Ciacchi

Host: on invitation of Prof. Erik Bitzek

The use of transition metal oxides as functional materials is often unavoidable in critical technologies, but their mining and refining raises environmental and geopolitical concerns. This makes the recovery of valuable elements from wastes, such as refractory metals present in small concentration in industrial slags, a problem of massive importance. In this talk I will present a recovery strategy based on Engineered Artificial Minerals, which selectively sequestrate the elements of interest from oxide mixtures upon smelting and recrystallisation. The formulation of appropriate additives to induce the formation of such minerals roots upon DFT calculations combined with flame-spray pyrolysis experiments. Provided sufficient accuracy and precision, these enable the exploration of the compositional phase space of multicomponent slags and bring atomistic information into industrial-scale processes for element recovery. I will also outline major challenges and a possible way forward for the accurate first-principle prediction of formation and reaction energies of transition metal oxides, as a mean to support new materials design strategies.

The colloquia series is organized by of the International Max Planck Research School on Sustainable Metallurgy (IMPRS SusMet)