Work with industry
What we offer
We design and understand functional materials with first-principles and computational methods, and we work closely with experimental groups. Companies come to us when they need to know why a material behaves as it does, or which material to make next.
- Batteries and energy storage: electrodes, solid electrolytes and their interfaces, for lithium, sodium and multivalent batteries. See Rechargeable batteries.
- Ion transport: how fast ions move in a material, and how to make them move faster, from first principles to kinetic Monte Carlo.
- Materials screening and design: high-throughput calculations that narrow a large set of candidates down to the few worth making.
- Methods and software: new simulation methods, and the codes to run them. See Method development and our Software.
- Other functional materials: organic electroactive materials, porous frameworks and non-linear optics.
Our papers show the range of this work, and many of them were written with experimental partners.
Ways to work together
Sponsored research
A company funds a research project carried out in the lab, usually with a student or research fellow working on it. The project’s aims, its timeline and how its results are shared are agreed in a research agreement with Purdue University, which also covers publication and intellectual property.
Collaborations
We work with industrial researchers on joint projects that combine our calculations with their experiments, data or products, often leading to joint publications. Students in the group may also spend time with an industrial partner.
Our software and data
Our codes and databases are open source, and companies are welcome to use them under their licenses. See the Software page for what each one does, how to install it and which papers to cite. Get in touch if you need help applying them to your problem.
Consulting
Prof. Canepa can advise companies on specific technical questions in his areas of expertise, as an individual and separately from the lab’s research, in line with Purdue University’s policies on outside activities.
Get in touch
Write to Prof. Canepa at canepa [at] purdue.edu with a few lines about your company, the problem you want to solve and the kind of collaboration you have in mind. See also Contact us.