Eszter Mádai
Eszter received her bachelor degree in chemical engineering at the University of Pannonia, Hungary in 2018. During her bachelor, she was working as a research assistant in the Modeling and Simulation of Complex Molecular Systems research group at the Department of Physical Chemistry. After finishing her bachelor program, she was admitted to Advanced Materials for Innovation and Sustainability (AMIS) international double-degree master program, labelled by EIT RawMaterials. She studied materials science and engineering at TU Darmstadt (Germany) in the first year of the program, and chemistry at University of Liege (Belgium) in the second year. Her research was focused on the simulation of nanodevices.
Current project: Electrochemical Conversion of CO2 to Synthetic Fuel Using 2D Electrode Materials
PhD student Eszter Mádai - funded by: Cohesion
Research summary:
As the carbon footprint and its collective and personal reduction is a major concern nowadays, new designs and routes for CO2 conversion and the creation of carbon-neutral fuel production are crucial. The traditional ways of the conversion with noble metals are not a sustainable path, due to their low efficiency, scarcity and the high cost. The development of 2D materials gives a new opportunity for CO2 reduction and their properties can be tuned in various ways, such as doping and defect creation. However, as 2D nanosheets can be engineered from various metals, carbides, nitrides etc. the optimization of the material properties for a specific production path is still challenging. The PhD research project is focused on the characterization and optimization of potential 2D electrode materials for CO2 conversion into CO, as a step of the carbon-neutral fuel production. Furthermore, the project also involves Molecular Dynamics simulations, to understand the mechanisms of the conversion and also the behaviour of the 2D electrode material at the molecular level.
The project is supervised by Dr. Peyman Taheri (MSE) and Dr. Remco Hartkamp (P&E) and Prof. Arjan Mol (MSE) as the promotor.
Selected publications:
E. Mádai, M. Valiskó, A. Dallos, and D. Boda. Simulation of a model nanopore sensor: Ion competition underlies device behavior. J. Chem. Phys., 147:244702, 2017.
E. Mádai, B. Matejczyk, A. Dallos, M. Valiskó, and D. Boda. Controlling ion transport through nanopores: modeling transistor behavior. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 20(37):24156–24167, 2018.
E. Mádai, M. Valiskó, and D. Boda. The effect of the charge pattern on the applicability of a nanopore as a sensor. J. Mol. Liq., 283:391–398, 2019.
E. Mádai, M. Valiskó, and D. Boda. Application of a bipolar nanopore as a sensor: rectification as an additional device function. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 21(36):19772–19784, 2019.