Our aim is to advance technologies in three major areas of energy storage applications.

1. Energy-Dense Metal Anodes: Enabling metal anodes is our primary research focus. We investigate plating and stripping behaviors of the metal anodes using atomic force microscopy, electron microscopy, and electrochemistry.

2.Solid-State Electrolyte/Separator: Our research also aims to develop novel solid superionic conductors . We design oxides, phosphates, thiophosphates for solid-state batteries and find how the long/short-range order determines ion mobility and what chemistry stabilizes interface reactivity.

3. Next-Generation Battery Cathode Materials: We study Na, and K-ion battery materials that consist of earth-abundant elements in order to understand how materials chemistry, crystal structure, and interface morphology affect the energy storage properties.

To study functional materials, we utilize various techniques. This includes electrochemical methods such as cyclic voltammetry, galvanostatic/potentiostatic measurement, and impedance spectroscopy. Our focus is also to understand the structural evolution of materials with respect to thermal and electrochemical inputs using in situ and ex situ X-ray diffraction, pair-distribution function, and X-ray absorption spectroscopy. We are now developing these capabilities in-house or at national lab beamlines.

The key element for the development of next-generation batteries is scalability in manufacturing. We are developing a new method to scale up the production of Li metal batteries and solid-state Li batteries suitable for a range of applications, such as electric vehicles, electric flights and drones. This is done by collaboration with an Institute Professor Dilhan Kaylon in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and a Director of Highly-filled Materials Institute.