Dr. Xianyong Wu, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at University of Puerto Rico will give a seminar titled "Building Better Batteries for Energy Storage" to the interested faculty and students at Discovery Park.

Abstract

Rechargeable batteries play a critical role for energy storage. Currently, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) represent the state-of-the-art battery technology, and they find wide applications in our daily life. However, LIBs suffer from limitations of moderate energy density, safety concerns, and low Li element abundance, which cannot satisfy the growing demand of emerging areas, such as long-range electric vehicles, grid-scale energy storage, and aerospace explorations, etc. In this talk, I will introduce my research achievements on 3 innovative battery systems, i.e., solid-state batteries, aqueous batteries, and Na/K-ion batteries, which provide exciting properties that are not available to conventional Li-ion batteries. The solid-state battery offers a much higher energy density, while aqueous batteries show great promise for fast-charging and low-temperature operation. Besides, the Na/K-ion battery exhibits an exceptional cycling performance and low cost. Our work highlights the importance of electrolytes and ionic charge carriers in building better battery systems for future energy storage.

Biography

Dr. Xianyong Wu joined the chemistry department at the University of Puerto Rico as an assistant professor in November 2021. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington and Oregon State University from 2016 to 2021. In June 2016, he obtained his doctoral degree from Wuhan University in China. He has been working on rechargeable batteries for energy storage since 2011, and he has published 44 peer-reviewed papers on high-impact journals, such as Nat. Energy, J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Adv. Mater., and Adv. Energy. Mater. etc. The total citation number is 5956, and the H index is 31.