Title
Developing and applying new tools to understand how materials for lithium and ‘beyond-Li’ battery function
Biography
Professor Clare P. Grey is the Geoffrey Moorhouse-Gibson Professor of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College Cambridge.
She received a BA and D.Phil. (1991) in Chemistry from the University of Oxford. After postdoctoral fellowships in The Netherlands and at DuPont CR&D in Wilmington, DE, she joined the faculty at Stony Brook University (SBU) as an Assistant (1994), Associate (1997) and then Full Professor (2001 to 2015).
She moved to Cambridge in 2009, maintaining an adjunct position at SBU. She was director (2009 to 2010) and associate director (2011 to 2014) of the Northeastern Chemical Energy Storage Center, a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center.
Recent honors/awards include the Research Award from the International Battery Association (2013), the Royal Society Davy Award (2014), the Arfvedson-Schlenk-Preis from the German Chemical Society (2015), the Société Chimique de France, French-British Prize (2017) and the International Solid State Ionics Galvani-Nernst-Wagner Mid-Career Award (2017), of which she is the first recipient.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 2017 has been elected as a Foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and Fellow of the Electrochemical Society. Her current research interests include the use of solid state NMR and diffraction-based methods to determine structure-function relationships in materials for energy storage (batteries and supercapacitors), conversion (fuel cells) and carbon capture.
Abstract
The development of light, long-lasting rechargeable batteries (and the invention of the lithium-ion battery, now 25 years ago) 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. Rechargeable batteries are now playing an increasingly important role in transport and grid applications, but the introduction of these devices comes with different sets of challenges. New technologies are being investigated, such as those using sodium and magnesium ions instead of lithium, and the flow of materials in and out of the electrochemical cell (in redox flow batteries). Importantly, fundamental science is key to producing non-incremental advances and to develop new strategies for energy storage and conversion.
This talk will focus on our work on 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), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and X-ray diffraction approaches to correlate structure and dynamics with function in lithium- and sodium-ion 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. Complementary ex-situ investigations allow more detailed structural studies to be performed, to correlate local and long-range structure with performance.
About IMSE
Founded in 2015, the Institute for Molecular Science and Engineering is the newest of Imperial Collge London’s Global Institutes. The Institute brings engineers, scientists, clinicians and business researchers together from Imperial’s four faculties to find molecular-based solutions to grand challenges facing our world. By blurring the boundaries between molecular science and engineering, and changing the way scientists and engineers work together, the aim of the Institute is to accelerate the pace of development to address these challenges. The Institute co-ordinates a range of integrated activities to enable researchers at Imperial and elsewhere to engineer novel products and solutions that are firmly based on advances in molecular science and engineering.