As famously stated by Prof. Herbert Kroemer during his lecture for receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics 2000, “the interface is the device”. This sentiment is now stronger than ever, particularly for energy storage and generation devices, which are heavily dependent on both the complex heterogenous interfaces formed by the combination of materials and the intrinsic interfaces that exist within materials. 

The Dawson group employs computational modelling techniques to improve the fundamental understanding and performance of material structures and properties for energy storage, conversion and generation applications. Our particular expertise lies in interatomic potentials-based molecular dynamics and density functional theory methods, with the aim of describing ion transport at the interfaces within and between materials for current and next-generation battery architectures, photovoltaics and fuel cells. With the rise of supercomputing power and the need to analyse enormous datasets for the discovery of novel and improved materials, the necessity for computational materials science has never been greater.