Rebecca Vincent
CEI Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow Rebecca Vincent is co-advised by CEI director and chemical engineering professor Dan Schwartz and chemical engineering professor Lilo Pozzo as she develops non-destructive Li-ion battery diagnostics for evaluation of the health of electric vehicles and grid storage systems. She also collaborates with CEI Affiliate Faculty Dr. Jie Xiao, the leader of the Advanced Battery Fabrication facility at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and a major contributor to the US DOE Battery500 consortium. Vincent earned her Ph.D. in Materials at the University of California-Santa Barbara as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Her work with UCSB professor Ram Seshadri as a member...
Douglas A. Reed
Assistant Professor of Chemistry The Reed lab makes microporous materials - solids with molecule-sized pores and atomically thin walls that result in very high surface areas. While typical microporous materials are made with rigid and insulating walls, our group utilizes new types of chemical bonds that are flexible or conductive, making the resultant structures amenable for efficient greenhouse gas capture, water purification, energy storage, or alternative energy production. Email | Website...
Shijing Sun
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Dr. Shijing Sun's research lies at the crossroads of materials science, data science, and robotics, driving interdisciplinary studies into autonomous materials design for clean energy technologies. With a vision to address global energy, climate, and sustainability challenges, Dr. Sun’s interests span from understanding the fundamental structure-function relationships of inorganic materials to tool development incorporating artificial intelligence for amplified research capacities and efficiency. She joined UW from the Toyota Research Institute where she worked on EV energy storage. She previously worked at MIT applying data science to thin film photovoltaics. Email | Website | LinkedIn...
Jie Xiao
Dr. Jie Xiao is a Battelle Fellow and the leader of the Battery Materials & System Group at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). She is an affiliate professor of materials science & engineering at the University of Washington and is a PNNL-UW Distinguished Faculty Fellow. Dr. Xiao’s research spans from fundamental research, battery materials scaleup and manufacturing, to cell fabrication and engineering for vehicle electrification, sensors, and grid energy storage. She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal papers and been named top 1% Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher since 2017. She holds eighteen patents in the area of energy storage and seven...
Julia White
Advances in energy storage are a critical aspect of the effort to convert the world to clean energy sources as electrification increases. For applications such as electric vehicles, lithium ion batteries are the best technology available but need to be improved upon further to meet energy density and power demands. Anode-less lithium batteries are extremely promising for drastically increasing energy density and rate capabilities, yet dendrite formation leading to rapid failure remain an obstacle in their implementation. My research will focus on designing ultrathin (<50 micron) 3D current collectors, altering both geometry and chemistry, and examining the mechanism of lithium electrodeposition. The findings will...
Ramsess Quezada
Organic Mixed Ionic Electronic Conductors (OMIECs) are a set of organic semiconducting materials that conduct both electronic and ionic charge in an electrolyte. When OMIECs are electrochemically oxidized or reduced, counter-ions will enter the film to compensate the electronic charge. This process of ion injection is a crucial one for the optimization of these materials in applications such as organic batteries and capacitors. My research will focus on probing and understanding the electrochemical and electrostatic relationship between these charges in conjugated polymers. Utilizing a wide range of characterization techniques, including XRD and AFM, I will investigate the physical relationship between these electronic and ionic...
Vinh Nguyen
The Internet of Things (IoT) holds immense promise for energy sustainability but has a critical limitation: traditional energy storage cannot meet the power, energy, and size requirements of devices that power the IoT. Batteries that utilize specialized 3D geometries can meet these requirements, but manufacturing these batteries is currently time-intensive, inflexible, and requires laborious post-process integration. I will address these limitations by developing a manufacturing workflow that can print customized, integrated energy storage on-demand. First, I will develop a specialized manufacturing platform with custom printheads and tools. I will use this platform to 3D print a customized battery using a single-step, automated procedure that simplifies...
Xiaoxiao Jia
Layered vanadium oxides have proven to be the most promising electrode materials for aqueous rechargeable batteries on account of their multiple valence states of vanadium and large interlayer spacing. However, capacity decay due to vanadium dissolution and structural instability remains a great challenge. Our prior research has revealed these problems can be mitigated by chemical pre-intercalation of metal cations with much enhanced power and energy densities as well as much improved energy conversion efficiency. But fundamental understandings are yet to be achieved, my next-step work includes a detailed study on effects of coordination, valences, electronegativity of those preinserted ions on the electronic and crystal...
Daphne Garcia
The focus of my research is to develop new electrode materials for energy storage devices by improving current chemical processes of dealloying brass sheets to create three-dimensional nanoporous copper structures. By controlling the dealloying process, a more even distribution of pores that are all less than a micron in diameter and greater surface area in the structure will be achieved. These structures will function as current collectors in lithium-ion batteries, with the potential for higher energy density, increased cyclic performance and rate kinetics. Variables such as dealloying chemical composition, brass composition, and sheet thickness will be analyzed to identify the ideal conditions for achieving...
Diwash Dhakal
Rechargeable batteries are among the candidates that can fulfill the evolving energy storage needs and are being researched extensively. My research focuses on the application of X-ray spectroscopy techniques to better understand the critical processes in rechargeable Zn-ion batteries (ZIBs). Specifically, I am looking at the local chemical environment and coordination complex in electrolytes and ion pairing in the electric double layer at electrode interfaces. Such a study will lead to a better understanding of the role of ion pairing on both structure and dynamics at the electrode-electrolyte-interface, a key question for ZIBs and many other battery systems. Advisors: Gerald T. Seidler, Guozhong Cao -...
David S. Bergsman
Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering The Bergsman group tackles emerging challenges in water, energy, and sustainability using nanomaterials. Through the design of ultrathin nanostructures and coatings, we create membranes that can separate contaminants from water, catalysts that drive difficult chemical reactions, and materials enable the formation of previously unobtainable device architectures. We combine atomically-precise synthesis, advanced characterization approaches, and data science tools to better understand the behavior of molecules in these uniquely small systems and use that understanding to invent processes that can enable the use of clean energy technologies at scale. Email | Website | LinkedIn Recent Publications David S. Bergsman, Bezawit A. Getachew, Christ B. Cooper, Jeffrey...
Parker Steichen
My research focuses on the application of sulfide solid electrolytes in all solid state batteries (ASSB). While the high ionic conductivity of these materials have sparked significant interest amongst researchers, poor electrochemical stability has been a significant obstacle to realizing practical sulfide electrolyte based ASSBs. I am looking at how we can improve the long term stability of these materials so that we can realize practical and robust high energy density ASSBs. Advisor: Jihui Yang - Materials Science & Engineering...