MSE Colloquium March 31: Shirley Meng, Advanced Diagnostic Tools for Lithium Metal and Solid State Batteries

Abstract

Lithium (Li) metal has been considered as an ideal anode for high-energy rechargeable Li batteries while Li nucleation and growth at the nano scale remains mysterious as to achieving reversible stripping and deposition. A few decades of research have been dedicated to this topic and we have seen breakthroughs in novel electrolytes in the last few years, where the efficiency of lithium deposition is exceeding 99%. Here, cryogenic-transmission electron microscopy (Cryo-TEM/Cryo-FIB) was used to reveal the evolving nanostructure of Li deposits at various transient states in the nucleation and growth process, in which a disorder-order phase transition was observed as a function of current density and deposition time. More importantly, the complementary techniques such as titration gas chromatography (TGC) reveals the important insights about the phase fraction of solid electrolyte interphases (SEI) and electrochemical deposited Li (EDLi). While cryo-EM has made significant contributions to enabling lithium metal anodes for batteries, its applications in the area of solid state electrolytes, thick sulfur cathodes are still in its infancy, therefore, I will discuss a few new perspectives about how future cryogenic imaging and spectroscopic techniques can accelerate the innovation of novel energy storage materials and architectures.

Bio

Laboratory for Energy Storage & Conversion, The University of Chicago, IL, USA

Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS), IL, USA

Dr. Y. Shirley Meng is a Professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. She serves as the Chief Scientist of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS) Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. Meng is the principal investigator of the research group - Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion (LESC), that was established at University of California San Diego since 2009. She held the Zable Chair Professor in Energy Technologies at University of California San Diego (UCSD) from 2017-2022. Dr. Meng received several prestigious awards, including the C3E technology and innovation award (2022), the Faraday Medal of Royal Chemistry Society (2020), International Battery Association IBA Research Award (2019), Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists Finalist (2018), American Chemical Society ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces Young Investigator Award (2018), C.W. Tobias Young Investigator Award of the Electrochemical Society (2016) and NSF CAREER Award (2011). Dr. Meng is elected Fellow of Electrochemical Society (FECS), Fellow of Materials Research Society (FMRS) and Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She is the author and co-author of more than 280 peer-reviewed journal articles, two book chapters and six issued patents. she is the Editor-in-Chief for Materials Research Society MRS Energy & Sustainability. Dr. Meng received her Ph.D. in Advance Materials for Micro & Nano Systems from the Singapore-MIT Alliance in 2005. She received her bachelor’s degree in Materials Science with first class honor from Nanyang Technological University of Singapore in 2000.