Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR, www.cnr.it) is the main Italian public research organization, with more than 8400 employees and 4000 researchers. Its mission is to carry out, promote, spread, transfer and improve research activities in the main sectors of knowledge and to apply them for the scientific, technological, economic and social development of Italy. CNR is distributed all over the country through a network of institutes (more than 100) aiming at promoting a wide diffusion of its competences throughout the national territory and at facilitating contacts and cooperation with local firms and organizations. CNR has a total annual income of 900 M€, more than 40% coming from private investments and from other institutions. It has attracted more than 44 ERC winners and it has the highest number of patents in Italy. CNR run two polar stations, witnessing its opening to international cooperation.

Within CNR, a well established expertise in the field of materials science exists, recognized by many projects and patents. In particular, the people involved in the present project have a consolidated experience in the fields of physics, chemistry and  electrochemistry of materials pertinent to the research on batteries, both from an experimental and a computational point of view. The researchers collaborate among them since many years and with several groups worldwide and participated in various national and European projects. Contracts and collaborations with public or private entities for activities in the battery area were also obtained. Activities about materials for lithium batteries are going on since almost 20 years in the group and a large scientific outcome has been produced. Since 5 years also the investigation and characterization of ionic liquids became one of their top research activities. They posses equipment, computational software and experience that allow to foresee the successful achievement of the tasks outlined in the research project here presented. Apart for the equipment available in their laboratory (see the following) they have access to microscopy facilities of CNIS (FESEM, AFM) and UniBAS (TEM), synchrotron radiation facilities for infrared (Soleil), XAFS (Elettra) or XRD (Elettra and ESRF) measurements.