Mentoring visit lecture – prof. Teresa Gatti, Politecnico di Torino, Italy

24 08 2026

Centre of New Technologies would like to invite to a lecture by Prof. Teresa Gatti entitled “Substitute materials for sustainable energy technologies”.

Modern technologies in the fields of energy supply and electronics rely on a variety of highly specialized functional materials. Nowadays many of these consist of chemical elements whose limited availability may prevent a mass production of the respective devices or systems. Simple estimates for photovoltaics and thermoelectrics show that using these technologies on the required scale, i.e. Tera- Watts of electric power, will be strongly limited due to resource shortages and high production costs. The development of so-called “substitute materials”, based on abundant or “non-critical” chemical elements (“elements of hope”), as well as a general reduction of the material demand for a certain technology are required to meet this challenge. Current research applies these strategies to conversion, storage, as well as transport of energy. This is done on the one hand by exploring alternative chemical compounds and on the other hand by taylor-made nanostructuring of known materials, decreasing the demand of material while keeping performance constant. This lectures series will explore the problematic and its possible solutions by discussing the following aspects:

The concept of “critical raw materials” (CRMs) and their current monitoring by the European Commission (scarcity, supply-risk)
Impact of CRMs on the implementation of a circular economy scheme
Possibilities offered by CRMs recycling strategies
Use of CRMs in energy (and related) technologies
Possibility of substitution for CRMs in established energy (and related) technologies and emerging ones.

Prof. Teresa Gatti is Full Professor of Chemistry for Applied Technologies at Politecnico di Torino, Italy. She was a previous Group Leader at the Center for Materials Research of the Justus Liebig University Giessen (Germany), where she maintains the permanent role of affiliated researcher. She is recipient of the 2021 European Research Council Starting Grant with a project on Janus 2D materials, of a 2025 ERC PoC grant on 2D-materials based piezoresistive blood pressure sensors and 2026 ERC PoC grant on lead-free materials for indoor photovoltaics. With her team, she works on the synthesis and characterization of novel low-dimensional systems for use in energy-related and (opto)electronic applications, with major focus on sustainability. She is associate editor of the Springer Nature journal npj 2D Materials and Applications.

The event, organised as part of Action I.1.1/IV.1.1 “Mentoring Programme”, will take place on 31.08.2026 at 11:00 in the main seminar hall at the Centre of New Technology (ul. S. Banacha 2c).