BRETT LUCHT, a professor of chemistry at the University of Rhode Island, is undertaking a three-year study to improve battery performance at low temperatures as part of a $480,000 subcontract with Brookhaven National Laboratory. The research, which is being funded through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, centers on electrolyte liquid in lithium-ion batteries and its interface with the positive and negative electrodes. Electrolyte promotes the movement of lithium ions between the electrodes, allowing a battery to discharge energy and recharge.
What does it mean to you to be awarded $480,000 by Brookhaven National Laboratory to improve the performance of electric-car batteries at low temperatures? This project is an outstanding opportunity to collaborate with researchers at Brookhaven along with teams at the University of Maryland and the Army Research Laboratory. Battery research is a very multidisciplinary field and opportunities to collaborate help researchers to address the multiple challenges in a battery. The research combines chemistry, materials science and engineering. The project will allow my students to directly collaborate with other scientists in the field and … utilize state-of-the-art instrumentation at Brookhaven.
How did you become involved with researching batteries? I initially collaborated with Yardney Technical Products of Pawcatuck, Conn., [and] currently EaglePicher [Technologies in] East Greenwich … on some projects funded by the Department of Defense and NASA to develop lithium batteries. My experience in mechanistic organic chemistry was a good fit for many of the problems associated with the electrolyte in lithium batteries. We studied the mechanisms of performance decreases for military batteries. My research then expanded rapidly into lithium batteries for electric-vehicle applications around 2010.
We are investigating the liquid electrolyte inside the lithium battery. The electrolyte enables the lithium ions to shuttle back and forth between the two electrodes, the anode and the cathode, when the battery is charged and discharged. The electrolyte decomposes over time, causing the battery to lose storage capacity and have worse performance at low temperature.
What is your goal with your research, and what other interesting projects are you developing? The goal of this project is to develop electrolytes which improve performance of lithium batteries at low temperature. We are also investigating electrolytes which enable higher-energy lithium batteries. One research project involves developing electrolytes for higher-capacity anodes, such as silicon or lithium metal.
How has the pandemic impacted your research at URI? The pandemic has limited our ability to conduct research. My labs at URI were mostly shut down for two months. We were able to write research manuscripts and research proposals remotely. However, our ability to conduct experiments in the laboratory was significantly reduced. n
