Materials Science Research Lecture
***Refreshments at 3:45pm in Noyes lobby
Abstract:
The climate change imperative has presented opportunities across a broad technology landscape to create new decarbonization solutions or re-invent technologies which have served as the pillars of industrialized society. Three examples in which materials behavior or processes play a critical role will be highlighted in this talk. 1) For electric transportation, solid-state batteries based on lithium or sodium metal electrodes offer a promise of higher specific energy with improved safety compared to current technology. A critical failure mode in this class of devices is dendrite formation upon metal plating (charge mode), initiating at the alkali metal-solid electrolyte interface. Direct measurement of the mechanical stresses accompanying dendrite growth using operando birefringence microscopy has illuminated the chemo-mechanical relationship between plating stresses and dendrite tip corrosion. For lithium dendrites in garnet solid electrolyte (LLZTO), a surprising dependence of the plating-induced stresses on current and electrical history of the dendrite is observed, implicating electrochemical embrittlement, the details of which are revealed by cryo-STEM of the dendrite tip. The results show that even highly stable solid electrolytes can decompose in extreme electro-chemomechanical environments at dendrite tips, and suggest criteria to avoid such failure. 2) Large-scale long-duration grid storage presents a different challenge where low cost, about tenfold lower than today's lithium ion batteries, is necessary to bridge multi-day gaps in renewable generation cost-competitively with natural gas. Here, the multi-year development of an iron-air battery technology,1 beginning with government-funded basic research and currently scaling to mass production, will be discussed. 3) Efforts to decarbonize industrial production naturally focus on the largest emitters, of which cement production stands out at ~8% (~4 Gton/year) of current global GHG emissions. A scalable solution is needed that can compete on cost (eventually) with today's ordinary Portland cement (OPC) and ideally without subsidies. The evolution of an electrochemically-based approach2 to avoid high temperature thermal processes altogether while providing a form-fit-function replacement for OPC will be discussed.
1W.H. Woodford, et al., One Earth, 5[3] 212-215 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2022.03.003
2L. D. Ellis, et al., PNAS, 117(23), 12584-12591 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821673116
More about the Speaker:
Yet-Ming Chiang is Kyocera Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. He has published over 330 scientific articles and holds over 100 issued U.S. patents, of which more than 70 have been licensed to or are held by practicing companies. Chiang is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society, Materials Research Society, American Ceramic Society, and the National Academy of Inventors. His work in energy and sustainability has been recognized by the Forbes Sustainability Leaders award, TIME 100 Climate award, the World Economic Forum's Technology Pioneer Award, the Economist's Innovation Award, and The Electrochemical Society Battery Division's Battery Technology Award. Chiang has brought several laboratory discoveries to commercialization through companies he has co-founded including American Superconductor Corporation, A123 Systems, 24M Technologies, Desktop Metal, Form Energy, and Sublime Systems. He co-directed the MIT Future of Energy Storage study (2022) and leads the Center for Electrification and Decarbonization of Industry, a flagship project of MIT's Climate Grand Challenges program.