Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The market for lithium-ion batteries is exploding as global society aims to decarbonize transportation, implement renewable energy generation and more efficiently manage energy distribution. While current Li-ion batteries are filling the initial market need, there are significant challenges associated with achievable energy densities, cost, safety, and the overall sustainability of these batteries. The long-term goal of the proposed Discovery Grant (DG) program is to eventually enable batteries made from more sustainable cathode and anode materials such as sulfur and sodium. These are abundant, inexpensive and high capacity which can be formulated into high energy density batteries when combined with high-capacity metal or alloy-based based anodes. The main challenge in formulating functional batteries from these active materials is the significant change in volume upon battery charge and discharge that cause various failure mechanisms in conventional liquid electrolytes. The volume expansion is especially detrimental to batteries operated with emerging solid-state electrolytes (SSEs) due to the effective incompressibility of the SSE. To address these challenges, in the short-term, Pope aims to leverage his expertise and the unique properties of 2D materials to control the mechanical and electrochemical interfaces between these active materials and emerging SSEs. The main research outcome of the proposed research will be various tools, and a deeper understanding of how, to mitigate the challenges in these battery systems that will help to accelerate the development and eventual deployment of more sustainable batteries with similar or improved performance compared to current Li-ion batteries. As Canada plans to play a pivotal role in the global and North American supply chains for electric vehicles and electric vehicle batteries, there will be an increasing need for highly qualified personnel in this area. The proposed DG program will support the training of more than 8 graduate students over the next 5 years and will indirectly support the training of various undergraduate and postdoctoral researchers who will graduate as experts in electrochemistry, battery materials and who will have had the added benefit of working in a battery manufacturing and scale-up facility at the University of Waterloo.