Beyond Lithium Batteries: Robust Material Designs and Testing

Speaker:

Vijay Murugesan
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Abstract:

Lithium (Li)-ion batteries developed in 1970s has widely established as the workhorse for powering modern electronic and electrical devices. Numerous research efforts over the decades, made us realize the near-theoretical capacity limits of Li-ion battery. Nevertheless, the exponential growth of energy demand from technological advancements requires more robust and reliable energy storage devices. In recent years, the search for beyond Li-ion batteries are gaining momentum due to promising materials design and development efforts. In particular, demonstration of multi-electron redox based materials has spawned a flurry of activity towards these futuristic battery technologies. US department of energy (DOE) has multiple research programs towards realizing these new technologies. Our team is working towards designing transformative materials for batteries – including cathodes, anodes, electrolytes and designer interfaces – that can help us realize the multi-electron redox reaction based batteries that can excel the specific capacity and energy density of the current Li-ion batteries. In this talk, I will discuss about our team’s efforts towards building multivalent ions (such as Mg2+) and organic redox molecule (such as ferrocene) based batteries.