Co-design
Co-design: a new concept for solar fuels and catalysis science
Co-design is a concept that recognizes the interdependency of different aspects of a project and addresses them via “participatory design” wherein the consumers of a product directly participate in its design. In the solar fuels basic science setting, the consumers of component-level science are solar fuels systems and the researchers who develop them. Co-design thus requires seamless feedback from systems to component-level research, for example by using systems-level data to identify the science gaps to be addressed by a new lines of inquiry for components and mechanisms. Co-design has been found to be particularly effective when there are multiple, often competing objectives – in our case selectivity, efficiency, and durability – and when there are multiple disciplines required to design against the objectives.
Co-design in LiSA’s project plan and team structure
LiSA’s project plan incorporates co-design at multiple scales, include a 3-Phase trajectory of the 5-year program focused on (1) components, (2) microenvironment assemblies, and (3) systems of microenvironment assemblies. This macroscopic co-design will be ultimately achieved through smaller-scale, iterative co-design processes discussed below. The aggregation of ideas from a diverse team is a central tenet of both co-design and the energy innovation hub research model and is implemented in LiSA via the Team structure. LiSA’s five Teams represent a diversity of disciplines including physics, chemistry, materials science, and chemical and electrical engineering, with notable and synergistic strengths in experiment, theory, and computation.
LiSA’s co-design research lifecycle
We envision co-design as a cyclic feedback process:
The components-to-systems research lifecycle is closed by data-driven hypothesis generation, creating a seamless flow of knowledge through 4 distinct areas of research:
Research on molecules, materials, and their associated mechanisms shapes understanding of microenvironment attributes important in their coupling and integration
Design of systems of mutually compatible microenvironments across component interfaces, with flux matching, and wide spectrum solar resource utilization
Construct test systems from assemblies of µenvironments and system models that integrate component-level mechanisms
Interpret systems data and models whose relationships and covariances, frame hypotheses and identify science gaps
Cyclic co-design to bridge scales of research
The co-design research lifecycle enables progressive incorporation of the many microenvironments needed to realize functional systems. This progression mirrors the advancement of scientific knowledge as the co-design cycles proceeds, which results in injection of component-level mechanistic understanding into systems-level models as well as feedback to the component-level research, as illustrated in the research lifecycle. Coordination of efforts is always key to making the whole greater than the sum of the parts, and co-design brings systems science principles to that coordination.
Data science in research throughout the co-design cycle
Data science permeates LiSA research, for example in accelerated materials discovery and autonomous workflows. In the context of co-design, data science closes the research lifecycle, for example via uncertainty and covariance analyses to inform component-level research. This approach inspires us to elevate machine learning from a prediction engine to a hypothesis generator.