Steve Martin
Iowa State University, IA·Materials Science
Lithium batteries contain a flammable liquid electrolyte, the material that carries ions between the electrodes. When a battery is overcharged, overheated or drained too fast, this liquid can catch fire.
- Fields
Materials Science
Chemistry
Engineering
- Topics
solid-state batteries
sodium batteries
sodium-ion conductivity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Prepare and characterize new sodium mixed glass former, mixed oxy-sulfide-nitride glassy solid electrolytes that combine silicon and phosphorus with oxygen, sulfur and nitrogen anions.
- Test the hypothesis that mixing glass formers and anions can raise sodium-ion conductivity to match or exceed lithium-ion conductors while keeping the glasses chemically and electrochemically stable.
- Determine how sodium ions move through these glasses, including their conduction mechanisms and the energy barriers along conduction pathways, to explain why sodium conducts more slowly than lithium.
More about the research
All solid-state batteries replace the liquid with a solid, and sodium-based versions could also be cheaper than lithium ones. The obstacle is that sodium ions usually move much more slowly through solids than lithium ions do.
Why it matters
Fires from liquid electrolytes in lithium batteries have caused many injuries. Sodium glass electrolytes with fast ion flow could enable solid-state sodium batteries that are safer, potentially much more energy dense, and cheaper, which could benefit consumer electronics, electric vehicles and grid energy storage users.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Dongchang Chen
University of New Mexico, NM·Chemistry
Identify which large oligomer molecules, formed when carbonate ester solvents link together, populate the solid-electrolyte and cathode-electrolyte interphases, using MALDI mass spectrometry on a series of model electrodes.
Martin Harmer
Lehigh University, PA·Materials Science
Discover new sodium-ion conducting oxide ceramics by combining ultra-high-temperature synthesis, which sinters materials in about 10 seconds, with first-principles data-driven computation and high-throughput measurements.
Trisha Andrew
University of Massachusetts, MA·Chemistry
Grow thick, conductive chloride-storing polymer electrodes by oxidative chemical vapor deposition and test whether they achieve high volumetric chloride storage capacity.
The school
Iowa State University: 23 labs on PI Pages, $462M a year on research, 327 research doctorates a year.
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