Materials for Energy Application

Our group aims to understand the underlying structural chemistry of functional solids in order to develop energy materials. Our primary focus is to design lithium- and sodium-ion conductors for solid-state battery applications. Since structure-transport correlation is the basis for designing materials with the desired properties, we investigate the structure via X-ray, neutron diffraction, and pair distribution function analysis, along with physical properties including electronic and ionic transport and mechanical property analysis.

Structural Chemistry of Solid Electrolytes

Ionic conductors are central to developing several energy applications, including batteries, fuel cells and sensor technologies. We aim to probe the ion-diffusion pathway, which can help to design fast ionic conductors. Currently, we are focused on sulfides, thiophosphates and halides for this purpose. We employ various structural characterization techniques and transport measurement tools to correlate the structure with transport.