Dr Dragos Neagu
Strathclyde Chancellor's Fellow
Chemical and Process Engineering
Personal statement
I joined the University of Strathclyde in 2020, as a Chancellor's Fellow in Renewable Energy in the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering. I completed my MEng in Materials and Process Engineering at the University Politehnica of Bucharest in 2008, and later earned a PhD in Energy Materials from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, in 2013. Following this, I worked in several post-doctoral research roles at the University of St Andrews and Newcastle University.
My career has been dedicated to contributing innovative and ground-breaking concepts in the fields of advanced materials and renewable energy conversion applications, as evidenced by my 40+ peer-reviewed publications, including five in the prestigious Nature-family journals and two in Energy and Environmental Science.
Now leading a dynamic research team of four, our focus is on the development of materials and devices for renewable energy conversion. This includes materials development, characterisation, and testing with applications in green hydrogen production, clean power generation, carbon capture, and conversion to sustainable fuels and chemicals. My mission is to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon society by improving technology performance, reliability, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability. This is achieved by collaborating with both industrial and academic partners worldwide to drive meaningful change.
In addition to my research, I am committed to mentoring the next generation of energy engineers and promoting knowledge transfer for a cleaner, sustainable energy future.
Area of Expertise
- Technologies: electrolysers, fuel cells, catalysis, membranes, chemical looping, direct air capture, hydrogen, sustainable fuels
- Material classes: oxides, ceramics, composites, nanoparticles, nanomaterials, perovskites, spinels, molten carbonates
- Materials preparation and processing: solid state synthesis, hydrothermal, reduction processing, exsolution, ball milling, sonication, screen printing, tape casting, cell assembly
- Methods: X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS)
- Software: Wolfram Mathematica, Origin Pro, CrystalMaker, GSAS II, CASA XPS, Blender, MidJourney
Prize And Awards
Publications
Research Interests
Our research is currently centred around the design, preparation, and testing of energy materials, catalysts, and adsorbents. A primary focus is the application of energy materials to technologies such as fuel cells and electrolysers for clean power generation and green hydrogen production, and catalysts for converting carbon into useful and sustainable fuels and chemicals. Additionally, we utilise adsorbents for carbon capture technologies and water treatment for environmental applications. Overall, our goal is to enhance technology performance, reliability, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability.
We are particularly interested in the instrumentation and methods that underpin this research. We strive to understand materials and processes at every scale, from the atomic to the macroscopic. This often involves supporting investigations with in situ electron microscopy studies to understand the role of atoms in driving material properties, and advanced synchrotron experiments coupled with process analysis to understand structure-property correlations across material scales.
Furthermore, we are invested in understanding the impact of these materials at scale. For example, we assess the consequences on performance at the device, system, and ultimately, economic levels when a material's property or metric is improved. For instance, if we enhance a material's ion conductivity for electrolysers tenfold, what is the effect on the cost of the produced hydrogen? This understanding is crucial for identifying the factors that drive the reduction of costs of technologies and processes, making them viable for enabling other technologies or fields. It also helps in agenda-setting by determining if certain materials are worth developing and to what extent before diminishing returns are reached, and a step-change innovation is required to further advance a field.
Many of these processes are also relevant for space exploration. For example, the Martian atmosphere is rich in carbon dioxide, which could be harnessed to produce pure oxygen for sustaining life and fuels and chemicals for sustaining colonization. As such, one area we are looking to expand into is energy and chemical production for space exploration.
Professional Activities
Projects
The instrument was acquired through an EPSRC Core Equipment fund, with an internally allocated £64k from the University of Strathclyde
Contact
Dr
Dragos
Neagu
Strathclyde Chancellor's Fellow
Chemical and Process Engineering
Email: dragos.neagu@strath.ac.uk
Tel: Unlisted