Seminar: Jeff Lopez, M.I.T.

The Department welcomes Jeff Lopez, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Lopez’s seminar is titled, “Understanding and Design of Materials for High Energy Density Batteries”.

Environmental challenges and economic forces are reshaping the way we generate and consume energy on a global scale. To keep up with the accelerating adoption of electric vehicles, allow for grid scale energy storage, and meet the demands of future technological advances, new materials for high energy density batteries must be developed. Strategies to enhance the mechanical and chemical stability of next-generation electrode materials are key to the successful and safe integration of batteries into our future energy systems. In this presentation, I will discuss new materials designed to address issues of stability in Li-ion batteries and fundamental insight into the mechanisms of this stabilization. The first portion of my talk will describe how a supramolecular, hydrogen-bonding self-healing polymer is used to stabilize high capacity anode materials. Second, I will describe further investigation toward a general understanding of how polymer coatings affect the electrodeposition of metallic lithium anodes. Overall, the goal of this work is to contribute new materials to be used in electric vehicles, grid scale storage, and new electronic devices, and to use these materials to develop fundamental understanding to provide direction for future materials design and improved stabilization of advanced battery chemistries.

Dr. Jeff Lopez is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working with Professor Yang Shao-Horn. Dr. Lopez earned his Master of Science degree and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 2018. Recently, he was awarded the Metrohm 2019 Young Chemist Award. Dr. Lopez’s research focuses on electrode-electrolyte interface for polymer electrolytes.