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...
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...
Juan Antonio Vazquez Marquez
My current research in professor Al Nelson’s lab is focused on utilizing photoinitiated base-catalyzed polymerizations in vat photopolymerizations. Photobase generators could enable the use of a broader scope of monomers in vat photopolymerization. The resin I am currently developing uses an ionic liquid as the diluent which imparts the printed object ionic conductivity. This ionic conductivity allows for the material to function as a separation membrane in batteries. In the future, I plan to incorporate lithium salts to use this material in a semi-solid lithium battery. Developing new energy storage systems is important for the transition towards a clean energy grid....
Anthony Romero
My name is Anthony Romero, a second year Materials Science and Engineering PhD student advised by Prof Jun Liu and Prof Jihui Yang. My research is focused around integrating Li metal into the negative electrode in Li-ion batteries. If done correctly, we can increase the theoretical gravimetric capacity ~10x versus industrially standardized carbon-based negative electrodes. However, there are many scientific/engineering challenges with using Li metal; the most prominent being uneven plating and stripping during repeated cycling – which ultimately leads to premature and/or unexpected cell failure. Various approaches currently exist to address this problem, ranging from unique battery architectures (e.g., solid state batteries) to...
Connor Dalton
My research is broadly focused on synthetic methods of introducing porosity to semiconducting or magnetically ordered materials. More specifically I focus on the incorporation of silsesquioxane 'pillars' between layers of two-dimensional perovskites. Introducing porosity into perovskites increases surface area for applications in energy storage and catalysis and allows for post-synthetic modification through intercalation of small molecules. Advisor: Doug Reed — Chemistry...
Yeu (Helen) Chen
I am a third-year graduate student in the physics PhD program, currently working in Dr. Gerald Seidler's group. Our team specializes in x-ray spectroscopy for the study of material properties, and I have been actively involved in designing and building advanced instruments for this purpose. My specific research focus centers on the characterization of battery electrolytes using x-ray spectroscopy. I am passionate about contributing to advancements in clean energy research and am thrilled to be a part of the CEI community. I look forward to expanding my expertise and exploring new avenues within the field of clean energy research....
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...
Christine Morrison
Conjugated polymers are touted for their electronic and photonic properties, and have been shown to have significant applications in light-harvesting and storage. Much research has already been done showing the plethora of applications for conjugated polymers, but there has been considerably less work involving conjugated cyclic polymers. My research is focused on creating an optimized initiator for ring expansion metathesis polymerizations (REMP) for use in the synthesis of conjugated cyclic polymers. Ring expansion polymerizations are a favorable way to approach the production of cyclic polymers as they provide better control over molecular weight, effective conjugation length, and long-range morphology of the polymer. Using REMP...
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...