Energy and clean growth
ISIS enables research into harnessing different forms of energy and increasing the productivity with which resources are used, alongside understanding and reducing the adverse impacts of human activity on the natural world.
What are we doing at ISIS in clean energy research?
Energy and Clean Growth is an area of enormous social, political, and economic significance, in which scientific research has a transformative role. This is reflected in this area’s proportionally significant academic and industrial use of ISIS, the large fraction of ISIS science staff involved, and the number of ISIS Impact Awards. There are many areas of research in common with other activities on the Harwell Campus and across STFC.
We support many research activities that support the UK Government’s Clean Energy Sector Plan and the Advanced Manufacturing sector of the Industrial Strategy. This includes battery technologies, wind, nuclear fission, fusion energy, carbon capture usage and storage, hydrogen, and heat pumps.
Critical capabilities of neutrons and muons relevant to clean energy materials include:
- The ability to observe light elements including hydrogen, lithium, oxygen; and the ability to see these in the presence of heavy elements.
- Penetration of neutrons and muons into samples allows the study of large or delicate components
- The penetrating ability of neutrons means complex sample environment can be used
- In-situ and in-operando studies are possible
- The quantitative study of the dynamics of matter
- An ability to image components and materials in three dimensions from the atomic through to macroscopic lengthscales
