ESiM Project News

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The ESiM project consortium met in San Sebastian from 17-18 October 2023, hosted by the project partner CSIC. The consortium discussed the advances of the projects and planned the next steps.

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ESiM @Dresden Long Night of Science 2023
ESiM PhD student explains the functioning of scanning tunneling microscopy to a guest

On 30/06/2023 from 5 to 11 pm the TUD Dresden partner opened its lab in the Barkhausen building to show the working principle of scanning tunneling microscopy and present the ESiM activities. Many visitors, children from Dresden schools, student and adults, joined the lab and learnt how we are working to store energy in a single molecule.

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Audience during the ESiM Worskhop "Crossroad of Maxwell Demon"
Audience during the ESiM Worskhop "Crossroad of Maxwell Demon"

The two-days workshop took place at CEMES-CNRS in Toulouse (France) on the 1st and 2nd of March 2023. 20 invited speakers from European countries presented their work about nano/micro-systems and electronic devices able to address a single object at the nanoscale (atom, molecule…) and specifically concerning cold-trap experiments and theory with or without a supporting surface.

To our knowledge, it was the first time that interdisciplinary sciences communities met together to share their view points on topics like intramolecular or quantum thermodynamics and single molecule motive power.

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A collaboration between 4 ESiM partners (TU Dresden, IPF Dresden, CNRS Toulouse, CSIC San Sebastian) has shown that a zwitterionic single-molecule machine can work in two different ways under bias voltage pulses. It is a unidirectional rotor while anchored on the surface. It is a fast drivable molecule vehicle (nanocar) while physisorbed.

In the same experimental conditions, the ESIM partners investigated the inelastic tunneling excitation producing the movement for both the unidirectional rotation of the rotor and the directed movement of the nanocar. The work represents an important step towards the realization of single-molecule machines, converting electrical energy in selected movement.

The work is published in ACS Nano as Article ASAP, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.2c12128

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.2c12128

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The second ESiM project meeting will take place at the PICO LAB of CEMES-CNRS in Toulouse on February 27th and 28th, 2023. Principal investigators, postdoc and PhD students working in ESiM will discuss the first results of the project and the preparation of the first ESiM project review.

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ESiM kickoff meeting - group photo of the project collaborators
ESiM kickoff meeting - group photo of the project collaborators

From Wednesday, 22 June until today, the collaborators of the ESiM Project (Energy Storage in Molecules) came together in Dresden for their initial meeting. The project partners from Germany, Spain, France, and The Netherlands presented their individual work packages and discussed the roadmap of the 4-year project.

The European Pathfinder Open project ESiM, led by cfaed SMM Group Leader Dr. Francesca Moresco, aims to use intramolecular properties (rotations, conformational changes) for energy storage. ESiM investigates storing (and releasing) of energy in a few specific intramolecular degrees of freedom. The project combines theory and simulation, molecular design and synthesis, scanning probe microscopy and manipulation, solid-state physics and nanotechnology.

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The EU HORIZON-EIC-2021-PATHFINDEROPEN proposal Energy Storage in Molecules (ESiM) was recently approved and will tentatively start in April 2022.
ESiM aims at creating the scientific basis for addressing the pressing challenges of a scalable clean energy storage. The ESiM strategy makes use of the conformational degrees of freedom of organic molecules, which will be arranged in dense molecular arrays on a surface. This concept circumvents the limits of battery technology which is based on ions flow and on environmentally harmful substances.