PhD Candidate
CHRYSOSTOMOS PAPAMICHAIL
chpap@materials.uoc.gr
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Title
Solid polymer electrolytes for energy storage beyond Li-ion batteries
Supervisor
GLYNOS EMMANOYIL, ,
Committee Members
VLASSOPOULOS DIMITRIOS, Professor, Materials Science & Technology Dept. - UOC
SAKELARIOU GEORGIOS, ,
Abstract
The need for stationary energy storage for integrating large-scale renewable energy sources grid is growing at a very fast pace. As renewable energy sources are scattered in time and space, and are intermittent by nature, storing the energy produced and delivering it on demand relies on batteries to power the grid in order to maintain a continuous, dispatchable and reliable stream of power and to avoid shortcomings of renewable sources. The growing scarcity of lithium resources severely limits the use of current Lithium Battery (LB) technologies in large-scale energy storage, thus necessitating the development of beyond-Li storage technologies. One of the most popular potential alternatives are sodium batteries (SBs). Owing to the high natural abundance of sodium, its homogeneous distribution and its comparatively lower cost, alongside with the fact that both Na+ and Li+ possess similar electrochemical properties, SBs come out as promising viable alternatives to LBs. Since battery-grade sodium can be extracted from seawater and be produced more easily than Li, these are batteries regarded as more environmentally friendly and safer to transport due to the use of aluminium current collectors, which is of particular interest for large-sized batteries. Going from metal-ion to metal batteries brings extra energy density, but Na metal anodes are even more reactive than Li, which also renders attractive the exploitation of other metals, such as Ca or Mg, which are less reactive and more stable and have the advantage of delivering two electrons per metal. During the course of the proposed PhD thesis, we plan to develop a fundamental understanding of the effect of cation chemistry and macromolecular architecture (linear and branched homo- and copolymers polymers will be utilized) on the structure-property relationship of solid polymer electrolytes involving both single valent (e.g., Na+) and multivalent (e.g., Mg2+ and Ca2+) cations as charge carriers. The research objectives will be coupled with a clear technological objective of integrating the developed Solid Polymer Electrolytes (SPEs) in prototype battery cells.