Advanced Energy Storage Team Builds on Collaborative Success
A Scialog: Advanced Energy Storage team has built on the success of their 2019 project, producing five publications advancing basic understanding of operation and degradation mechanisms in solid-state batteries, as well as expanding their collaboration to win a $9 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project in 2022 and a $11 million Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Frontier Research Center in 2023 focused on solid-state batteries and chemo-mechanics.
This work could help advance the next generation of solid-state batteries, which could be safer and have higher energy density than conventional lithium-ion batteries.
Neil Dasgupta, University of Michigan, Matthew McDowell, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Partha Mukherjee, Purdue University, won a Scialog team award funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for their 2019 project, Recharge, Re-liquify, Re-wet (Re3): Self-Healing Interfaces for Solid-State Batteries.
“We had gotten to know each other through Scialog and other conferences but had not worked together,’’ McDowell said. “Scialog provided just the right spark to come together to collaborate on a new idea we thought of at the conference using liquid metals to control interfaces in solid-state batteries.”
The project evolved into a larger collaborative effort investigating fundamental and applied aspects of solid-state electrochemical interfaces.
McDowell said the team had connected on these topics with another Scialog Fellow, Kelsey Hatzell, Princeton University, who was involved in other efforts. As the project expanded, they realized they all had similar yet complementary interests in the solid-state battery area and began to work together on new proposals and ideas for larger projects.
“Leveraging of Scialog seed funding by two orders of magnitude while simultaneously growing the collaborative team is stupendous,” said RCSA Senior Program Director Richard Wiener. “Ultimately, we hope this critical research leads to a new generation of batteries, which is crucial to ameliorating climate change.”
The DARPA project aims to develop morphogenic concepts for interface stability in solid-state batteries. Mukherjee, McDowell, Dasgupta, and Hatzell are co-PIs on this multi-university, multiyear project that started in spring 2022.
In the DOE project, Mukherjee, McDowell, Dasgupta, and Hatzell are all members of the MUSIC (Mechano-Chemical Understanding of Solid-Ion Conductors) Energy Frontier Research Center. Dasgupta is the Deputy Director and McDowell, Mukherjee, and Hatzell are the thrust leads in this center, which has a total of 16 PIs, including Scialog: Negative Emissions Science Awardee David Kwabi, University of Michigan.
McDowell said Scialog connected him to a wide network of energy storage experts at a critical stage. “Personally, the series of three Scialog conferences were one of the most important activities I took part in early in my career,” he said.
Mukherjee agreed. "The Scialog trilogy has been one of the most enriching experiences in my career -- both personally and scientifically,” he said. “The foundation for science dialogue led to these important follow-on collaborations. I am grateful to RCSA and Sloan for providing this important platform."
“This is a perfect example of the kind of outcome we envisioned when supporting Scialog: Advanced Energy Storage,” said Sloan Foundation Program Director Evan Michelson. “Turning initial Scialog seed funding into two multimillion-dollar awards from the federal government in just a few years is an impressive accomplishment. We are delighted that critically important research will continue to expand and progress to help decarbonize the energy system.”
