Professor Sarah Tolbert is the Center Director of the new Center for Strain Optimization for Renewable Energy (STORE) at UCLA, which aims to make sodium ion batteries a marketable commodity.
The UCLA STORE Center will receive $4.5 million over the next three years from the Department of Energy’s Energy Earthshots (EERC) program, a major new DOE initiative which is investing $264 million to advance clean energy technologies within the decade. UCLA chemistry professor Xiangfeng Duan, materials science professor Bruce Dunn, and chemical engineering professor Yuzhang Li also play key roles in the center.
From UCLA Newsroom (by Holly Ober):
UCLA center aims to make sodium ion batteries a marketable commodity
The new Center for Strain Optimization for Renewable Energy, or STORE Center, is part of the Department of Energy’s Energy Earthshots program
Lithium ion batteries are the state of the art for energy storage but much of the world’s lithium supplies lie outside the United States, making it costly and subject to geopolitical constraints. A new Department of Energy center at UCLA aims to improve batteries made from one of the world’s most abundant elements: Sodium.
Sodium ion batteries exist but not in useful forms for most consumers. They charge slowly and have a shorter use life than lithium ion batteroes. Lithium is preferred for batteries because it’s the smallest cation, or positively charged ion, that is not chemically reactive, allowing it to move into and out of the battery’s cathode and anode without bumping into too many other atoms along the way. The free movement of ions makes lithium ion batteries charge quickly, and with relatively few atoms pushed out of place, the battery can also have a long use life.
Sodium is the next smallest cation but it’s bigger by a longshot, meaning it faces a lot of resistance as it moves through the material between the cathode and anode. This deforms the arrangement of atoms in the material, making the battery charge slowly and have a shorter use life.
“We’re setting out to make sodium ion batteries a marketable commodity. Our goal is to get sodium batteries to where lithium is now within the next ten years,” said center director Sarah Tolbert, a distinguished professor of chemistry. “We are doing this by developing materials that have big spaces in them so sodium can move without forcing other atoms to rearrange, by engineering layers that resist rearrangement by sodium, and by making materials that are malleable and able to flex to accommodate volume change.”
The other big challenge is to make sure that all of the other elements in the battery are also low cost. The means moving away from traditional battery materials like nickel and cobalt, and instead focusing on low cost elements like iron, manganese, titanium, sulfur, and phosphorous. “The exciting challenge of this project is to solve fundamental materials problems in a practical space. When you can do that, it becomes possible to both advance science and have a positive impact on society,” adds Tolbert.
UCLA’s new Center for Strain Optimization for Renewable Energy, or STORE Center, will receive $4.5 million over the next three years from the Department of Energy’s Energy Earthshots program, which is investing $264 million to accelerate clean energy technologies within the next ten years. The new DOE Energy Earthshot program aims to parallel the scientific and engineering excellence that brought humans to the moon in the original moonshot, but to use that effort to solve fundamental problems related to the development of energy technology here on earth.
UCLA chemistry professor Xiangfeng Duan, materials science professor Bruce Dunn, and chemical engineering professor Yuzhang Li also play key roles in the center. Collaborators include scientists from UCSB, USC, Caltech, and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
