Jeffrey Richards
Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering
Northwestern University
Jeffrey Lopez
Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering
Northwestern University
Date: November 6, 2024
Time: 1000–1100h ET
Driven by demand from electric vehicles and grid scale storage, the market for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is expected to grow ~30x to almost 9 TWh produced annually in 2040. Production of these batteries requires high-yield coating processes using slurries of active material, conductive carbon, and polymer binder applied to metal foil current collectors.
To better understand the connections between slurry formulation, coating conditions, and composite electrode performance, we apply new Rheo-electric characterization tools to battery slurries. Rheo-electric measurements reveal the differences in carbon black structure in the slurry that go undetected by rheological measurements alone. Rheo-electric results are connected to characterization of coated electrodes in LIBs to develop methods to predict the performance of a battery system based on the formulation and coating conditions of the composite electrode slurries.
An interactive Q&A session follows the presentation.
Benefits of attending the webinar
Learn about:
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Rheo-electric measurements for battery slurries;
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How slurry components including carbon black, active material, and polymer binder, impact flow behavior and implications for coating operations;
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Connections between composite electrode structure and battery performance.
Presenters
Jeffrey Richards is Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. The Richards laboratory seeks to develop relationships linking the microscopic structure of multicomponent soft materials to their macroscopic properties and exploit these relationships to develop new materials that facilitate the generation, storage, and transport of electrical charge and energy. After completing a BS in Chemical Engineering at Purdue University (2008), Prof. Richards received his MS and PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington (2011 and 2014 respectively). He completed postdocs at the NIST Center for Neutron Research (2015-2018), University of Delaware (2014-2015), and was an NSF IGERT Fellow at the University of Washington (2009-2011). He received a 2021 NSF CAREER Award.
Jeffrey Lopez is Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. The Lopez Group uses insight gained from the study of charge transport processes and reactions at electrochemical interfaces to inform the design of new materials for energy storage applications. Prof. Lopez received his BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Nebraska (2012) and PhD in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University (2018). He was an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prof. Lopez received the 2019 Metrohm Young Chemist Award (2019) and Eastman Chemical Student Award of the ACS PMSE Division (2018) and was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, Goldwater Scholar, and Coca-Cola Scholar.
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