Understanding and Design of Materials for High Energy Density Batteries

Join the Department of Chemistry for this Chemistry Colloquium featuring guest speaker Jeffrey Lopez, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University.

Environmental challenges and economic forces are reshaping the way we generate and consume energy on a global scale. To keep up with the accelerating adoption of electric vehicles, allow for grid scale energy storage, and meet the demands of future technological advances, new materials for high energy density batteries must be developed.Strategies to enhance the mechanical and chemical stability of next-generation electrode materials are key to the successful and safe integration of batteries into our future energy systems. In this presentation, Lopez will discuss new materials designed to address issues of stability in Li-ion batteries and fundamental insight into the mechanisms of this stabilization. The first portion of my talk will describe how a supramolecular, hydrogen-bonding self-healing polymer is used to stabilize high capacity anode materials. Second, he describe further investigation toward a general understanding of how polymer coatings affect the electrodeposition of metallic lithium anodes. Overall, the goal of this work is to contribute new materials to be used in electric vehicles, grid scale storage, and new electronic devices, and to use these materials to develop fundamental understanding to provide direction for future materials design and improved stabilization of advanced battery chemistries.