
Dr Foivos Markoulidis
Academic and research departments
Department of Chemistry, Department of Mechanical Engineering Sciences.Biography
Foivos is a Faraday Institution Research Fellow based across two departments in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences (FEPS), researching and developing cathode materials for lithium-sulfur batteries as part of project LiSTAr. He completed the MSc in 'Advanced Materials', here, at the University of Surrey and stayed on to conduct postgraduate research in FEPS, under a European Commission-funded PhD programme. His area of research was the fabrication, processing and testing of supercapacitors for electric vehicles. He carried out further, post-doctoral research on supercapacitors and graphene electrochemistry, at Imperial College London. Having also worked in the pharmaceutical industry, Foivos re-joined FEPS in late-2018 to conduct lithium-ion battery research.
University roles and responsibilities
- Electrochemistry Instruments Manager (12AZ02, 20AZ02)
- Panel Member of Health & Safety Forum (Area 8)
- Glovebox Manager (20AZ02)
My qualifications
In the media
Research projects
The consortium will generate new knowledge, materials and engineering solutions, thanks to its dual focus on fundamental research at material and cell level, and an improved approach to system engineering. The project will address four key areas of research: cathodes; electrolytes; modelling platforms; and device engineering. In doing so, the LiSTAR consortium is seeking to enable rapid improvements in Li-S technologies, with the aim of securing the UK as the global hub for the research, development and deployment of this emergent technology.
The High Power Material Hybridised Battery (HiPoBat) project proposed a novel battery hybridised with high power electrode material at micro- and nano-level, with self-regulated voltage to a high and wide plateau, improved safety and prolonged lifetime. Innovative materials were designed and manufactured in this project so that synergetic effects of high power and high energy material features raised both power and energy density above the sum of the individual components. HiPoBat cells were fabricated, tested and subjected to many iterations of fine-tuning of material design and manufacture, also with the help of modelling and simulations. At the moment, the technology is undergoing scaled-up, to large prismatic cell level.
The aim the project was to use a coordinated approach that by simultaneously developing a suite of processing approaches (from emulsification, 3D printing, layer-by-layer deposition, aerogels) defined and addressed the many common scientific and engineering issues and was aimed to generate a synergistic effect that would push technological development.
The aim of project AUTOSUPERCAP was to develop supercapacitors of both high power and high energy density at affordable levels by the automotive industry, and of higher sustainability than many current electrochemical storage devices. There were several issues to achieve a high performance/low weight power system that not only had to be addressed by various groups of scientists and engineers but those issues had to be analysed and processed in an integrated framework.
This project investigated inkjet printing techniques for the fabrication of organic PV cells. It also explored the change of substrate temperature or charging to create transverse orientation and transverse needle-structure in PEDOT:PSS and other polymeric layers, as well as transverse orientation of multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), and was aimed to improve PV cell performance.
The aim of the project was to abricate supercapacitor/EDLC cells with carbon-based fibrous and/or woven carbon fabric electrodes, utilising lithium/gel polymer electrolytes. The feasibility of combined improved performance and its correlation to carbon nanotube penetration into the carbon fabrics, was thoroughly investigated and reported.
My publications
Highlights
Robinson, J., Xi, K., Kumar, R.V., Ferrari, A.C., Au, H., Titirici, M-M, Puerto, A.P., Kucernak, A., Fitch, S.D.S., Garcia-Araez, N., Brown, Z., Pasta, M., Furness, L., Kibler, A., Walsh, D., Johnson, L., Holc, C., Newton, G., Champness, N.R., Markoulidis, F., Crean, C., Slade, R., Andritsos, E., Cai, Q., Babar, S., Zhang, T., Lekakou, C., Rettie, A., Kulkarni, N.N., Jervis, R., Cornish, M., Marinescu, M., Offer, G., Li, Z., Bird, L., Grey, C., Chhowhalla, M., Di Lecce, D., Miller, T., Brett, D., Owen, R., Liatard, S., Ainsworth D. and Shearing P. (2021). 2021 Roadmap on Lithium Sulfur Batteries. Journal of Physics: Energy, in-press. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7655/abdb9a
Markoulidis, F., Tennison, S., Lekakou, C., Slade, R. C. T. & Crean, C. (2020). Fabrication and testing of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery cathodes with carbonaceous additives: An introduction to phenolic resin-derived, solvent-templated mesoporous Carbon hosts in Carbon/S Cathodes. The Faraday Institution Conference 2020. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.27878.86082
Markoulidis, F., Dawe, A., Lekakou, C. (2020). Electrochemical double-layer capacitors with lithium-ion electrolyte and electrode coatings with PEDOT:PSS binder. Journal of Applied Electrochemistry. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10800-020-01497-y
Markoulidis, F., Bates, J., Lekakou, C., Slade, R., & Laudone, G. M. (2020). Supercapacitors with lithium-ion electrolyte: An experimental study and design of the activated carbon electrodes via modelling and simulations. Carbon. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbon.2020.04.017
Markoulidis, F., Lei, C., & Lekakou, C. (2017). Investigations of Activated Carbon Fabric-based Supercapacitors with Different Interlayers via Experiments and Modelling of Electrochemical Processes of Different Timescales. Electrochimica Acta, 249, 122–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electacta.2017.07.182
Markoulidis, F., Lei, C., Lekakou, C., Duff, D., Khalil, S., Martorana, B., & Cannavaro, I. (2014). A method to increase the energy density of supercapacitor cells by the addition of multiwall carbon nanotubes into activated carbon electrodes. Carbon, 68, 58–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbon.2013.08.040
Markoulidis, F., Lei, C., Lekakou, C., Figgemeier, E., Duff, D., Khalil, S., & Cannavaro, I. (2012). High-performance Supercapacitor cells with Activated Carbon/MWNT nanocomposite electrodes. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 40). https://doi.org/10.1088/1757-899X/40/1/012021
Woodward, R. T., Markoulidis, F., De Luca, F., Anthony, D. B., Malko, D., McDonald, T. O., & Bismarck, A. (2018). Carbon foams from emulsion-templated reduced graphene oxide polymer composites: Electrodes for supercapacitor devices. Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 6(4), 1840–1849. https://doi.org/10.1039/c7ta09893f
De Marco, M., Markoulidis, F., Menzel, R., Bawaked, S. M., Mokhtar, M., Al-Thabaiti, S. A., & Shaffer, M. S. P. (2016). Cross-linked single-walled carbon nanotube aerogel electrodes: Via reductive coupling chemistry. Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 4(15), 5385–5389. https://doi.org/10.1039/c5ta10311h
Lei, C., Amini, N., Markoulidis, F., Wilson, P., Tennison, S., & Lekakou, C. (2013). Activated carbon from phenolic resin with controlled mesoporosity for an electric double-layer capacitor (EDLC). Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 1(19), 6037–6042. https://doi.org/10.1039/c3ta01638b
Rocha, V. G., García-Tuñón, E., Botas, C., Markoulidis, F., Feilden, E., D’Elia, E., & Saiz, E. (2017). Multimaterial 3D Printing of Graphene-Based Electrodes for Electrochemical Energy Storage Using Thermoresponsive Inks. ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, 9(42), 37136–37145. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.7b10285
Lei, C., Markoulidis, F., Ashitaka, Z., & Lekakou, C. (2013). Reduction of porous carbon/Al contact resistance for an electric double-layer capacitor (EDLC). Electrochimica Acta, 92, 183–187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electacta.2012.12.092
Lei, C., Markoulidis, F., Wilson, P., & Lekakou, C. (2016). Phenolic carbon cloth-based electric double-layer capacitors with conductive interlayers and graphene coating. Journal of Applied Electrochemistry, 46(2), 251–258. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10800-015-0909-x
Markoulidis, F., Lei, C., & Lekakou, C. (2013). Fabrication of high-performance supercapacitors based on transversely oriented carbon nanotubes. Applied Physics A: Materials Science and Processing, 111(1), 227–236. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-012-7471-8
Fields, R., Lei, C., Markoulidis, F., & Lekakou, C. (2016). The Composite Supercapacitor. Energy Technology, 4(4), 517–525. https://doi.org/10.1002/ente.201500328
Markoulidis, F., Todorova, N., Grilli, R., Lekakou, C. & Trapalis C. (2019). Composite Electrodes of Activated Carbon and Multiwall Carbon Nanotubes Decorated with Silver Nanoparticles for High Power Energy Storage. Journal of Composites Science, 3(4), 97. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcs3040097