Blog

The team's work on micelle electrolyte was selected by Research Outreach and was highlighted in their January edition, issue 120.

Check out the links below for details:

https://researchoutreach.org/articles/inspiration-surfactants-li-s-cells-longer-life/

https://researchoutreach.org/publication/

The team has recently developed a novel methodology to analyze the decomposition product of electrolyte and additives by using on-electrode chromatography and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI). This work was published in Joule, and was highlighted on the Berkeley Lab news center website. Congratulations!

Warmly welcome our new members- Tianyu Zhu and Nhan Tran! Tianyu joined the group in October of 2020, having graduated from University of South Carolina with a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry. He is currently leading effort to synthesize and test polymer binder materials for Si/SiO2 anodes. Nhan joined the group in  December, 2020. He received a Ph.D. in Energy Science and Engineering in DGIST, South Korea in 2020. He is currently working on Si anode and Li-S projects. 

We wish them good luck and a good start on the job!

Tianyu Zhu

Nhan Tran

At the end of September, we bid farewell to our group member Zhimeng Liu, a visiting graduate student from Sichuan U (China), who has been in the group since September, 2018. He will now return to China to defend his thesis based on the work he has done here at LBNL. We sincerely wish him good luck on the thesis defense and all the best to his future endeavors!

At the same time, we welcome our new member Joe Papp. Joe is a freshly minted Ph.D. who just defended his thesis in Chemical Engineering at UC Berkeley in August. He will now lead efforts to test electrochemical properties of phase change materials and solid state battery. We wish him good luck and a good start on the job!

Virtual farewell party for Zhimeng
 

Joe Papp

Congratulations to Zhimeng Liu and coauthors on the recent publication of their article "Reversible Crosslinked Polymer Binder for Recyclable Lithium Sulfur Batteries with High Performance" in Advanced Functional Materials! This paper details a novel Li-S binder system consisting of commercially-available poly(acrylic acid) and poly(ethyleneimine), which react to form a dissolvable ionic crosslinked polymer (DICP) network. Not only does this binder lend improved cycling performance to sulfur/carbon composite cathodes, but it readily dissolves under basic aqeuous conditions, paving the way for easy recycling of used Li-S cells.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adfm.202003605

Check out our new paper "A Micelle Electrolyte Enabled by Fluorinated Ether Additives for Polysulfide Suppression and Li Metal Stabilization in Li-S Battery," published on Frontiers Chemistry on Jun 19th, 2020. This paper introduced our pioneering research on developing fluorinated electrolyte additives for advanced battery applications. As demonstrated in the paper, the novel electrolyte additive is validated to be effective addressing polysulfide dissolution and Li metal incompatibility issues in the Li-S cells. On this paper we collaborated with Dr. Chenhui Zhu, beamline scientist from Advanced Light Source (ALS), LBNL.

Welcome! We recently updated our website to a new, mobile-friendly format. We've also updated descriptions of our research, and will continue to add content in the coming weeks to better reflect our current projects. We hope you enjoy the new site and check back often for exciting news from our group!