About Us

The Center for Ionomer-based Water Electrolysis (CIWE) is an Energy Earthshot Research center funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) and Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR). The center is composed of principal investigators primarily at the DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), but has partners from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of California Berkeley, University of California Merced, University of California Irvine, Texas Tech, and Colorado School of Mines. The center brings together leaders in characterization, various electrolyzer technologies, digital twins, and artifical intelligence to address the fundamental questions that surround water electrolyzer interfaces. 

Energy Earthshot Research Centers support the Energy Earthshot Initiatives, which are accelerating breakthroughs for clean energy technologies. CIWE supports the Hydrogen Shot, which aims to reach $1 per kilogram of hydrogen in one decade, helping to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen and accelerate clean energy options. 

Our Impact

The impact of CIWE will be four-fold. CIWE will: 

• Establish a new paradigm of research, focused on physical and virtual experiments using a digital twin, for both large and small data experiments. 
• Push the frontier of investigating soft/hard interfaces, relevant for new and scalable hydrogen technologies. 
• Pioneer a multiscale framework and accompanying model that will translate the basic-science knowledge to the critical applied problems facing water electrolysis
• Demonstrate and explore synergy and complementarity of stability and function in water electrolyzers and explore interrelationships between multiple stressors.