Dr. Hui Yang, Sr Battery Process Integration Engineer at Ensurge Micropower will give a seminar titled "Solid-State Composite Electrolytes for Lithium-Ion Batteries" to the interested students and faculty at Discovery Park.

Abstract

High-energy density Li-ion batteries are critical to electric vehicles and cell phones. Current commercial liquid-electrolyte batteries raise serious concern on safety and low energy density. Therefore, solid-state electrolyte batteries receive increasing attention due to better safety and higher energy density as compared to liquid-electrolyte counterparts. However, commercialization of solid-state electrolyte batteries is hindered by low ionic conductivity and incompatible interface among different types of materials. Thus, rational material design and interface engineering have been performed to mitigate the problems. In addition, fundamental studies have been conducted to understand the Li -ion transport mechanism and synergetic interfacial chemical interactions in inorganic-organic composite electrolytes. The performance of solid-state electrolytes such as ionic conductivity, electrochemical window, and Li-ion transference numbers have been improved by combination of fundamental studies and rational design of materials.

Biography

Dr. Hui Yang received her Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the Institute of Chemistry at Chinese Academy of Science in 2016. During her graduate study, she developed a series of conductive 2D molecular materials as anode materials for Li-ion batteries. From 2017, she was trained as a postdoctoral fellow at West Virginia University and University of Massachusetts of Amherst, working with Prof. Nianqiang (Nick) Wu in Materials Science and Engineering. Her research interests lie in fundamental understandings of charge transfer and electrochemical reaction mechanisms, and develop high performance materials at atomistic and molecular level to enable safe, high energy density solid-state batteries. Currently, she is Senior Engineer working on thin film solid-state batteries. She has published 11 peer-review journal papers as first-author and 10 papers as co-author. She is also co-inventor of a US patent on fast charging solid-state batteries and a Chinese patent on Li-ion batteries.