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Cost Reduction
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Time Savings
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Increase in new materials candidates
German Aerospace Center’s Challenge
The German Aerospace Center (DLR) is the aeronautics and space research center of the Federal Republic of Germany. The center conducts research and development in aeronautics, space, energy and transport, security and digitalization.
The Center’s Institute of Future Fuels and Institute of Materials Research were looking for materials to create renewable fuels through water and CO2 splitting. Concretely, they were looking into redox materials allowing the efficient conversion of CO2 into CO as a component of syngas using solar-thermal energy.
They had identified suitable materials, but would like to optimize their solar-to-fuel efficiency by tuning the composition. The goal was to find materials with redox enthalpy lower than (Ce,Zr)O2.
ExoMatter’s Roadmap for Computational Materials Research
ExoMatter offered Quantum-chemical simulation (DFT) of completely new materials, simulated complex oxides of three different metals and ran thermodynamic calculations based on formation enthalpies.
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“In our research projects, we spend a lot of time on materials screening. Much of that is based on manual research and trial & error. By working together with ExoMatter, we can spend more time on the actual implementation of our ideas and accelerate our research significantly. ”
The project produced 15 simulated materials in a multi-step process with simulation of different phases. Experimental time was reduced by 6-12 months. An array of new materials candidates was found.
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“We really put ExoMatter to the test in our project, as we were looking for new materials and their properties which nobody studied before. ExoMatter accommodated our needs very efficiently and presented us with a roadmap for computational materials research. They even started their own DFT calculations and proved that they were accurate compared to the literature. This is an excellent result which will lead to a high-impact publication within a very short time.”
