Dr. Arumugam Manthiram, Professor and Chair of Engineering in Dept. of Mechanical Engineering and Dept. of Chemical Engineering at UT Austin will give a seminar titled "Sustainable Next-generation Battery Technologies" to the interested faculty and students at Discovery Park.

Absttact

The widespread adoption of battery technologies for electric vehicles and grid electricity storage requires optimization of cost, energy density, power density, cycle life, safety, and environmental impact, all of which are directly linked to severe materials challenges. Cost and sustainability will be the single dominant factor as we march forward. This presentation will focus on the development of sustainable next-generation battery chemistries and materials. Strategies and approaches for elimination of expensive and scarcely available cobalt, followed by eliminating nickel and ultimately any mined metal, including lithium, will be discussed. As an example, the progress on cobalt-free high-nickel cathodes, lithium-sulfur cells, and sodium-sulfur cells will be presented. The challenges of bulk and surface instability and chemical crossover during charge-discharge cycling, dynamics and stabilization of lithium or sodium plating and striping, advanced characterization methodologies to develop an in-depth understanding, and approaches to overcome the challenges will be presented.

Biography

Arumugam Manthiram is currently the George T. and Gladys H. Abell Endowed Chair of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin). He was the Director of the Texas Materials Institute and the Materials Science and Engineering Program at UT-Austin for 11 years during 2011 – 2022. He received his Ph.D. degree in chemistry in 1981 from Indian Institute of Technology Madras. After working as a lecturer in chemistry at the Madurai Kamaraj University for 4 years and as a postdoctoral fellow both at the University of Oxford and at UT-Austin with John Goodenough, he became a faculty at UT-Austin in 1991. His research is focused on batteries and fuel cells. He has authored 950 journal articles with 106,000 citations and an h-index of 161. He has mentored ~ 300 students and postdoctoral researchers, including the graduation of 71 Ph.D. students. He founded two startup companies, ActaCell Energy Systems in 2007 and TexPower EV Technologies in 2019.

He is a Fellow of Materials Research Society, Electrochemical Society, American Ceramic Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is an elected member of the World Academy of Ceramics. He received the Battery Division Research Award in 2014, Henry B. Linford Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2020, Battery Division Technology Award in 2021, and the Inaugural John B. Goodenough Award in 2023, all from the Electrochemical Society. He received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2015, Billy and Claude R. Hocott Distinguished Centennial Engineering Research Award in 2016, and International Battery Association Research Award in 2020. He delivered the 2019 Chemistry Nobel Prize Lecture in Stockholm on behalf of Professor John Goodenough.