Unilever Research Prize 2020 for MMP PhD student

Nadia Boulif, PhD at the Membrane Materials and Processes group of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, has received the Unilever Research Prize 2020 for her Master thesis carried out at the TU Delft. This prize is awarded each year to 13 students from universities in The Netherlands who carried out their project on a topic that is relevant to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Her master thesis was on the synthesis and characterization of anthraquinone-containing polymers as anode active materials for aqueous sodium batteries. Anthraquinone is a promising organic sodium storing material but suffers from a high solubility in aqueous electrolytes when it is reduced to a sodium salt, hampering its use in electrodes. The two main goals of the thesis were to overcome the solubility of the anthraquinone molecule in water by anchoring the molecule to various polymeric backbones and to study the effect of the polymer architecture on the battery performances.