Materials for Energy Storage

Environmentally friendly renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are important technology platforms to help reduce power consumption and related CO₂ generation for a cleaner, more sustainable future. However, the introduction of intermittent energy sources makes it imperative to store the generated energy to render those sources more predictable.

One of the most challenging aspects of energy storage is transportation, where stringent system requirements exist for size, performance, and safety. The CRF’s program in energy storage contributes to the development of new high-performance devices such as batteries, supercapacitors, and thermoelectric heating and cooling modules. Our major research activities are directed toward the synthesis of new functional materials with desired characteristics and their investigation using state-of-the-art characterization techniques. The underlying theme in our approach is to identify and modify materials to achieve new structures and bonding arrangements leading to materials with useful physical properties, particularly those relevant to the projected use in sustainable energy storage for transportation. Activities involve coupled modeling and experimental efforts to evaluate energy storage parameters, cycle-life and degradation mechanisms of the materials, and investigate pathways to increase their performance and overall energy efficiency.