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Transitioning to a sustainable electric vehicle future requires advanced energy storage technology creating the impetus to develop the next super battery. However lithium ion continues to improve and has substantial inertia in the EV market. Recent material breakthroughs in solid-electrolytes could enable a new class of non-combustible solid-state batteries delivering twice the energy density (>1,300 Wh/L) compared to lithium ion. While tremendous progress in laboratories has been made, technological and manufacturing challenges remain, creating the urgent need for fundamental and applied research.

Our group focuses on the research and development of solid-state battery materials, transforming these materials into commercially-relevant components, and understanding the underpinning mechanisms that control their performance and degradation. The types of materials we study are ceramic ion conductors, lithium and sodium metal, and a broad range of non-metal electrodes to include conventional lithium ion cathodes, sulfur, and liquid electrodes (for long duration energy flow cells). Within this subset of materials, we seek to understand their:

It is the integration of the fundamental knowledge gained from these material studies with the characterization of prototype components and advanced batteries that gives us insight into the coupling of mechanical and electrochemical phenomena – also referred to as mechano-electrochemical phenomena.

To expand our knowledge, our group closely interacts with myriad disciplines both nationally and internationally to include materials science and engineering, mechanical and chemical engineering, physical chemistry, physics, inorganic and organic chemistry, operando and in-situ characterization (from atoms to the macro scale), and computation (atomistic to the continuum scale).