Virtual Materials Chemistry Laboratories for Sustainable Energy Solutions

Laboratory education is the cornerstone of chemical sciences. In laboratories, students develop their practical skills and gain deeper, hands-on understanding of the concepts discussed in lectures and textbooks. Laboratory skills are crucial for successful transition to working life as professionals in chemistry, chemical engineering, and many other fields of science. The ongoing transition towards renewable and sustainable energy solutions requires higher training capacity of skilled chemists with versatile laboratory experience. At the same time, traditional laboratory education faces severe threats in many universities in Europe and world-wide. Laboratory education is relatively expensive compared to for example lectures and whenever universities face budget cuts, the quality and extent of laboratory education may be in danger. Furthermore, during the COVID-19 crisis, educational programmes with laboratory training were been among the hardest-hit sectors because in many countries students could not access laboratories due to university lockdowns.

We wanted to promote high-quality laboratory education by providing digital solutions that increase the resilience, quality, and financial sustainability of laboratory education. We have developed open, accessible, and scalable virtual materials chemistry laboratories for training students in the field of sustainable energy solutions such as light-emitting diodes or Li-ion batteries. Our BSc and MSc level virtual laboratories have been be integrated with state-of-the-art materials modelling tutorials, bridging experiment and theory. The developed virtual laboratories have been integrated in our curricula, either as completely new course offerings or integrated to existing laboratory courses. The project results make it possible for higher education institutions to offer students more versatile laboratory education around the Europe and globally.

Our concrete Project Results are: (1) laboratory virtualization guidelines, (2) virtual general chemistry laboratories, (3) virtual inorganic materials chemistry laboratories, and (4) virtual materials modelling platform integrated with the experimental laboratories. All Project Results are licensed with Open Access license and available in the internet to all interested educators. Overall, the project has built new capacities in European higher education by implementing and disseminating novel digital solutions for laboratory education. Working-life skills of students can be improved by integrating the virtual laboratories in students' curricula, providing stronger innovative capacities for their professional life. Our work strongly supports high-quality chemical education in Europe and contributes to development of sustainable energy technologies of the future.