Overview

Creating a sustainable energy future while protecting our environment is one of the most crucial challenges facing humanity today. To decarbonize our energy landscape, we need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and turn to renewable (but intermittent) energy sources such as solar and wind power. In the Seh research group, we are broadly interested in the development of new battery materials for energy storage and conversion.

The goal is to investigate new battery chemistries that can overcome the theoretical energy limits of conventional lithium-ion batteries today. High-energy and low-cost technologies based on sodium, magnesium and aluminum batteries are among the most promising candidates. Using concepts from materials chemistry and physics, we design novel battery materials (cathode, anode, electrolyte), understand structure-property relationships, and construct battery prototypes. Theory computations and machine learning are also used to accelerate the development of practical batteries for portable electronics, electric vehicles, grid energy storage, etc.  

​Technologies of interest include:

• Sodium batteries
• Magnesium batteries
  
• ​Aluminum batteries​​