Nanqiang Lecture:
Following Function in Real Time: New NMR and MRI Methods for Studying Structure and Dynamics in Batteries and Supercapacitors

Topic:
Following Function in Real Time: New NMR and MRI Methods for Studying Structure and Dynamics in Batteries and Supercapacitors

Lecturer: Prof. Clare P. Grey

Professor, Cambridge University, UK, Fellow of Royal Society of Professor, Department of Chemistry, State University of New York at Stony Brook

Associate Director, Northeastern Chemical Energy Storage Center, a Department of Energy Frontier Center, Stony Brook University

Time: 16:00-17:00, October 25, 2014 (Saturday)

Location: Room 202, Lujiaxia Building

Prof. Clare P. Grey is the Geoffrey Moorhouse-Gibson Professor of Materials Chemistry at Cambridge University. She received a BA (1987) and a D. Phil. (1991) in Chemistry from the University of Oxford. She was a Junior Research Fellow at Balliol College (1990), before spending a year at the University of Nijmegen, as a Royal Society postdoctoral fellow (1991), and two years as a visiting scientist at DuPont CR&D in Wilmington, DE (1992–1993). She joined the faculty at Stony Brook University (SBU) as an Assistant Professor in 1994. She was promoted to Associate and then Full Professor in 1997 and 2001, respectively. She currently maintains a part-time position at SBU, where she is the Associate Director of the Northeastern Chemical Energy Storage Center, a Department of Energy, Energy Frontier Research Center. She served as the Director from 2009-2011.  She was the recipient of an NSF National Young Investigator Award (1994), a Cottrell Scholarship (1997), a Dupont Young Professor Award (1997), a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (1998), an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship (1998), an NSF POWRE award (2000), a NYSTAR Award (2007), the 2007 Research Award of the Battery Division of the Electrochemical Chemical Society, the 2010 Ampere and RSC John Jeyes Awards, and the 2011 Royal Society Kavli Lecture and Medal for work relating to the Environment/Energy.  She was elected to the Royal Society in 2011. Her research interests include the use of solid state NMR and diffraction methods to investigate structure and dynamics in materials for energy storage and conversion.

Abstract:

Following Function in Real Time: New NMR and MRI Methods for Studying Structure and Dynamics in Batteries and Supercapacitors

Clare P. Grey1,2

1Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

2Department of Chemistry, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, USA

cpg27@cam.ac.uk

Cheaper and more efficient/effective ways to convert and store energy are required to reduce CO2 emissions. Batteries, supercapacitors and fuel cells will play an important role, but significant advances require that we understand how these devices operate over a wide range of time and lengthscales. 

The development of light, long-lasting rechargeable batteries has been an integral part of the portable electronics revolution.  This revolution has transformed the way in which we communicate and transfer and access data globally, and has impacted developing nations as much as industrial societies.  The invention of the lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery, a rechargeable battery in which lithium ions (Li+) shuttle between two materials (LiCoO2 and graphitic carbon) has been an integral part of these advances.  Rechargeable batteries are now poised to play an increasingly important role in transport and grid applications, but the introduction of these devices comes with different sets of challenges.  Importantly, fundamental science is key to producing non-incremental advances and to develop new strategies for energy storage and conversion. 

This talk will describe existing battery technologies and how they can be used to increase energy efficiency in transport and grid applications.  I will then describe our work in the development of methods that allow devices to be probed while they are operating (i.e., in-situ). This allows, for example, the transformations of the various cell components to be followed under realistic conditions without having to disassemble and take apart the cell.  To this end, the application of new in and ex-situ Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) approaches to correlate structure and dynamics with function in lithium-ion and lithium air batteries and supercapacitors will be described. The in-situ approach allows processes to be captured, which are very difficult to detect directly by ex-situ methods.  For example, we can detect side reactions involving the electrolyte and the electrode materials, sorption processes at the electrolyte-electrode interface, and processes that occur during extremely fast charging and discharging. Ex-situ NMR investigations allow more detailed structural studies to be performed to correlate local and long-range structure with performance in battery materials.