MSE Colloquium: Nian Liu, Breaking the wall to high-energy batteries via nanoscale materials design and in operando imaging

Abstract

Energy storage is a key element in utilizing renewable energy sources like solar and wind, which are intermittent in time and space by nature. Lithium-ion batteries using conventional electrode materials, though extremely successful in the past 25 years, is approaching its theoretical energy density. New electrode materials such as silicon and sulfur have completely different storage mechanisms from conventional ones, which give them ~10x higher storage capacity, but at the same time have challenging issues such as particle fracture, unstable interface with electrolyte, low mass loading, dissolution, etc. The rapid development of nanoscale science and technology in recent years provides a new possibility of tailoring the properties of materials and solve the above issues. In the first part of this presentation I will use silicon anode as an example, to illustrate our series of efforts on nanoscale design for overcoming the limitation of electrode materials and improving the high-energy battery performance. Engineering becomes powerful when accompanied by fundamental understanding. In the second part of this presentation, I will illustrate our understanding on high-energy battery electrode materials obtained using a combination of in operando X-ray, electron, and light microscopy. Finally, I will propose future research directions including super-resolution visualization of ion/electron transport and chemical reactions at the solid-electrolyte interface of electrochemical systems using non-invasive light microscopy. 

Bio

Dr. Nian Liu received B.S. in Chemistry (2009) at Fudan University in Shanghai, China and Ph.D. in Chemistry (2014) at Stanford University. His Ph.D. work was on nanoscale materials design for next-generation Li-ion batteries, supervised by Prof. Yi Cui in Department of Materials Science & Engineering. Dr. Liu is currently a postdoctoral scholar with Prof. Steven Chu in Department of Physics at Stanford University, using advanced light microscopy to understand batteries non-invasively in real electrolyte. He has broad interest in the combination of nanomaterials, electrochemistry, and light microscopy for understanding and addressing the global energy challenges.

Dr. Liu has published >50 papers in journals including Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Energy, Nature Communications, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, with total citation >4,800 and H-index 27. He has won Gold Medal in China National Chemistry Olympiad (2005) and received awards including Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Students Abroad (2014), The Electrochemical Society (ECS) Daniel Cubicciotti Award (2014) and American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Inorganic Chemistry Young Investigator Award (2015).