Felix Trier

Project title

Perpetual Energy Storage by Topological spin textures in Oxides

What is your project about?

Vortices are found everywhere in nature and range enormously in size from, for example, a centuries-old storm system on Jupiter that is larger than Earth to the tiny vortices that appear and disappear quickly when you stir your teacup. On scales of millionths to billionths of a metre, micro- to nanometres, such magnetic vortices can form in oxygen-rich crystals known as oxides. In my research project, I will investigate a completely new concept to store energy in a that does not exist today. Specifically, I will store the energy in these magnetic vortices. Due to a collective effect in the magnetic crystal, the stability of each magnetic vortex is enormously high and can easily at room temperature have an average lifetime that is longer than the age of the universe, and therefor magnetic vortices could potentially store energy forever!

How did you become interested in your particular field of research?

My interest in my research field stems from my passion for technologies that help pave the way for the green transition. For the past 14 years, I have been working with materials from the block of the periodic table known as the transition metals. Through this work, which has been going on for several years in France, I have helped to uncover that this class of materials can exhibit a particularly wide range of functional properties when combined with oxygen from, for example, the atmosphere and transformed into so-called oxides. It is precisely this wide range of functional properties that makes oxides, in my view, particularly interesting in the context of green technologies. For example, I have shown that they are a realistic candidate to replace silicon in future energy-efficient logic circuits, thereby helping to solve the growing problem of energy consumption in electronics. However, this is not the end of the story, and it is precisely my experience with energy-efficient electronics from which the idea of energy storage in magnetic vortices stems.

What are the scientific challenges and perspectives in your project?

No one has tried to use magnetic vortices to store energy until now. Therefore, there are many open questions I want to answer in my research project: What is the best way to store the energy in such magnetic vortices? And if you make a magnetic vortex battery, how quickly can such a battery be charged and discharged? In addition to their enormous stability, magnetic vortices can move very fast and the record for their maximum speed is demonstrated to be just under 1 km/s, which may therefore allow a battery concept where charging and discharging could be done in a matter of seconds! However, in order to utilize all these attractive properties of magnetic vortices in a battery, we need to understand how and why they move in crystals, which is also one of the main goals of my Sapere Aude: DFF-Starting Grant.

What is your estimate of the impact, which your project may have to society in the long term?

It would have a huge impact on our society if we could store energy over very long time scales. Think of the benefit of being able to store the energy that is produced in the summer when the sun is shining brightly, or in the autumn when the wind is blowing enough for later in the year where we, as things stand now, are dependent on the energy that we can generate by burning fossil fuels or can import from other countries. In addition, a battery with very short charging and discharging times could open up opportunities that are not possible today with existing battery technologies that take several minutes or hours to charge.

Which impact do you expect the Sapere Aude programme will have on your career as a researcher?

The grant from Independent Research Fund Denmark will allow me to study a concept that is currently not being studied anywhere in the world. For me, it will allow me to expand my research activities beyond the development of energy-efficient electronics to include energy storage in magnetic vortices. Being part of the Sapere Aude programme will therefore be of great importance in shaping and defining my research career going forward, but also help to place Denmark in a central position globally with a completely new energy storage concept.

Background and personal life

I am 37 years old and live in Roskilde with my wife, our three daughters aged 4-12 and two French cats. My partner and I enjoy travelling and experiencing the world, and with our respective careers in research, we have managed to take advantage of our international work on several occasions, which has led to numerous driving holidays across France, the US and Mexico. When not travelling abroad, we work on house renovation where I have learned new skills in lime mortar masonry, carpentry with recycled wood and wood fibre insulation. I am also an avid food enthusiast as well as a book collector.