News

We are thrilled to announce that on November 2^nd, 2026, the Canepa Research Group will move from the University of Houston to Purdue University, joining the School of Mechanical Engineering! This is an exciting new chapter for the group, and we can’t wait to continue exploring and designing functional materials in our new home.

Interested in joining us? Potential graduate students and research fellows are invited to visit our Join our Group page. All inquiries and applications should be routed to Prof. Canepa at canepa [at] purdue.edu.

Our group received support from Research Corporation For Science Advancement for a research project titled “Autonomous Discovery of Single-phase High-Entropy Transition Metal Chalcogenides”. This works is in collaboration with Shijing Sun at the University of Washington and Zak Al Balushi at UC Berkeley. We consider this is a significant achievement, particularly during these uncertain times for federal funding.

Research Corporation For Science Advancement is a foundation providing catalytic funding for innovative scientific research and the development of academic scientists since 1912.

Our group received support from The Welch Foundation for a research project titled “Exploring Links between Vibrational and Configurational Entropies in Complex Oxides via First-Principles and Machine Learning.” This is a significant achievement, particularly during these uncertain times for federal funding.

The Welch Foundation supports fundamental chemical research at educational institutions within the state of Texas. A research grant provides a minimum of $100,000 per year in funding to support research in chemistry by a full-time regular faculty member with tenure or on tenure-track who serves as principal investigator. Applications are restricted to universities, colleges, or other educational institutions located within the state of Texas and also listed as an educational institution by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Our research reacently published in, “Obtaining V₂(PO₄)₃ by sodium extraction from single-phase Na_x(V₂(PO₄)₃(1<x<3) positive electrode materials. Nat. Mater. 24, 234-242 (2025), DOI: 10.1038/s41563-024-02023-7 research toghether with LRCS in Amiens, France and ICMCB, Université de Bordeaux, France, was featured in Science Move over lithium: Sodium batteries could one day power a green economy

A PDF of this article can be found here.

Our group is excited to share with you that Piero has been named ACS Materials Au Rising Star in Materials Science!

Piero has been featured among the 17 early career materials researchers from around the world, who are pushing scientific boundaries, conducting impactful research at the forefront of fundamental or applied research, and interfacing with other disciplines.

More info can be found in this link.

On December 1^st the PhD studente Eshaan Patheria from the research group of Kim See at Caltech visited our laboratory.

Eshaan seemed to enjoy a rainy science discussion with Jerry and Ziliang.

The group of Prof. Palacín at the Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona, Spain could reproduce our predictions in Lu W., Wang J., Gautam G. S., Canepa P.; Chem. Mater., 33, 5809-5821 (2021) on CaV₂O₄ as cathode material for Ca-ion batteries.

More information about the novel experimental findings by the Palacín’s group can be found in Energy Storage Materials, 47, 354-364 (2022).

Today, July 30^th, Baltej Singh published the exciting results of our research lead by our collaborator Dr. Dipan Kundu in the School of Chemical Engineering at UNSW, Australia.

The manuscript investigates the fundamental electro-chemo-mechanical stabilities of Lithium-Indium and Lithium-Tin alloys of varied Li stoichiometries with sulfide electrolyte based SSBs. The intermetallic electrodes developed through a controlled synthesis and fabrication technique display impressive (electro)chemical stability with Li₆PS₅Cl as the solid electrolyte and maintain nearly perfect interfacial contact during the electrochemical Li insertion/de-insertion under an optimal stack pressure.

The manuscript can be found here

Big congratulations to Baltej for his achievement!

On July 15^th, Mr. Ziliang Wang has passed successfully the most important exam towards the fulfillment of his Phd in Materials Science and Engineeing at NUS. Big congratulations Ziliang towards your PhD achievements and success in science.

Most importantly, Ziliang salary now will be increased, which will allow him to pay your dinner.

On April 12^th, 2021, the research work of Mr. Tara P. Mishra entitled Unlocking the Origin of Compositional Fluctuations in InGaN Light Emitting Diodes and developed by NUS and SMART was has received some press in a number of new outlets, which are:

• The science behind varying performance of different colored LEDs on phys.org
• New Method may Lead to More Efficient LEDs by AZO Optics
• SMART discovers the science behind varying performance of different colored LEDs by ScienceDaily’s
• Researchers discover the science behind varying performance of different colored LEDs published on www.nanowerk.com
• New method observes compositional fluctuations in high-indium-content InGaN LEDs by Semiconductor Today

The full manuscript can be found here.

On February 5^th, the research work of Mr. Tara P. Mishra entitled Unlocking the Origin of Compositional Fluctuations in InGaN Light Emitting Diodes was published in Physical Review Materials. Tara developed a powerful methodology to detect the formation of In clusters in high Indium content In_xGa_1-xN LEDs quantum wells (QWs). His study showed a direct comparison between the computationally predicted and experimentally observed compositional fluctuations.

Autonomous detection of compositional fluctuations in In_xGa_1-x samples.

He found that although a random alloy model captures the distribution of compositional fluctuations in relatively low In (~18%) content In_xGa_1-xN QWs, there exists a striking deviation from the model in higher In content (~24 %) QWs. The results highlight a distinct behaviour in carrier localization driven by compositional fluctuations in the low and high In-content In_xGa_1-xN QWs, which would ultimately affect the performance of LEDs.

The full manuscript can be found here.

On December 10^th, Mr. Ziliang Wang has passed successfully his Comprehensive PhD Qualifying Examination (QE II). Big congratulations Ziliang towards your PhD achievements and success in science.

On August 27 2020 Dr. Zeyu (Jerry) Deng published his research work on NaSICON electrolytes and electrodes in Chemsitry of Materials. The title of the manuscript is Phase Behavior in Rhombohedral NaSiCON Electrolytes and Electrodes Check this out here!

Using a repertoire of techniques the care team analyzed the thermodynamic properties of the rhombohedral NaSiCON electrolyte by constructing the Na_1+xZr₂Si_xP_3-xO₁₂ phase diagram, based on density functional theory calculations, a cluster expansion framework, and Monte Carlo simulations.

Through the computed phase diagram, the care team identified the concentration domains providing the highest Na⁺-ion conductivity and previously unreported phase-separation behavior across three different single-phase regions. Furthermore, similarities in the phase behavior between Na_1+xZr₂Si_xP_3-xO₁₂ and other NaSiCON-based monotransition metal electrodes were noted. Our work is an important addition in understanding the thermodynamics of NaSiCON-based materials and in the development of inexpensive Na-ion batteries.

This research was funded by the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) under the NRF Fellowship Scheme and the ANR-NRF grant in colalboration with the LRCS Université de Picardie Jules Verne laboratory.

On July 28 2020 Piero was mentioned a NUS innovator on the NUS web-site as a result of his recently awarded NRF Fellowship together with three other colleagues from NUS. Check this out on NUS News!

The Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) Fellowship Scheme is a competitive programme that seeks to attract and recruit outstanding young scientists from around the world to conduct independent research in Singapore.

Piero was nominated Outstanding Reviewers for Journal of Materials Chemistry A in 2019!

Check this out on Journal of Materials Chemistry A

We are very excited to welcome Hengning Chen from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), China, in our research group at NUS from August 2020. We wish her best of luck with her graduate studies in MSE at NUS!

The Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) Fellowship Scheme is a competitive programme that seeks to attract, recruit and root outstanding young scientists from around the world to conduct independent research in Singapore.

Dr. Canepa is awarded the NRF Fellowship Class 2020, with a budget of S$ 3M. More information can be found here.

We are looking for motivated and inquisitive PhD students and postDoctoral researchers. Please consult us here.

Our recently published Nature Materials is selected to feature in the cover of the December issue.

Dr. Canepa is awarded the 5^th NRF-ANR (Singapore-France) Joint Grant Call together with Prof. Christian Masquelier at LRCS, Amiens, France. More information can be found here.

We are looking for motivated and inquisitive PhD students and postDoctoral researchers. Please consult us here.

Dr. Canepa published his work on solid electrolytes for safe batteries in Nature Materials.

On Thursday 31 May, Dr. Canepa will be presenting some work on multivalent batteries at e-MRS in Nice, France. More details can be found here. Invited talk AA.14.1.

On Wednesday 13 February, Dr. Jerry Deng, from the University of Cambridge has joined our research group at NUS. We are excited to learn new science from Jerry.

On Wednesday 16 January, Dr. Canepa will be presenting his research work on Mg and multivalent batteries at A*STAR in Singapore. More details can be found here.

We are excited to announce the arrival of our new fileserver ORION from SUPERMICRO and with more than 70 TB disk capacity! This will host our data and part of our computational infrastructure to crank out the analysis of our data.

Today, we were awarded 10M CPU hours on the ASPIRE 1 HPCx located at the National Supercomputing Centre NSCC. We hope to deliver the promised science.

Today, Dr. Pieremanuele Canepa attended a short class on the managment of simulations on the National Supercomputing Centre NSCC High performance computer Aspire-1. This class was very useful to identify engineers @NSCC to engage in the future.

Welcome to the web-site of the Canepa Research Lab. You will find here all about the research group and its work.

We will use this place to update you on the latest articles, participation to conferences and other topics that we find interesting. This is also the place where we will announce the arrival of new members and their achievements.

Stay tuned!