Dresselhaus Lecture 2024

Clare Grey, DBE, FRS, Royal Society Research Professor and Geoffrey Moorhouse-Gibson Professor of Chemistry at Cambridge University delivered the 2024 Dresselhaus Lecture on understanding battery function—new metrologies, new chemistries, and new insights.

ABOUT THE LECTURE
Rechargeable batteries have been an integral part of the portable electronics revolution and are now playing a critical role in transport and grid applications to help mitigate climate change. However, these applications come with different sets of challenges. New technologies are being investigated and fundamental science is key to producing non-incremental advances and to developing new strategies for energy storage and conversion.

This talk will focus on the work of Dr. Grey's research group to develop NMR, MRI and new optical methods that allow devices to be probed while they are operating, from the local, to particle, and then cell level. This allows transformations of the various cell materials to be followed under realistic conditions without having to disassemble and take apart the cell.

Starting with local structure and dynamics, as measured by NMR, Grey will then show—with the optical methods—how the different dynamics can result in different intercalation mechanisms. A good example is her work on LiCoO2, where via optical approaches they were able to directly visualize movement of phase fronts as lithium is removed and inserted into this material.

Inspired by work of Prof. Millie Dresselhaus, Grey will discuss her work on the application of electron spin resonance and dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) NMR to graphitic anode materials and lithium metal batteries, to understand battery degradation. Finally, new results on extremely high-rate batteries will be outlined and extensions of their new metrologies to study a wider range of electrochemical systems will be described.

ABOUT CLARE GREY
Clare P. Grey, DBE, FRS is a Royal Society Research Professor and the Geoffrey Moorhouse-Gibson Professor of Chemistry at Cambridge University. After receiving a BA and D. Phil. from Oxford University, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Nijmegen and at DuPont CR&D. She joined the faculty at Stony Brook University (SBU) as an Assistant (1994), Associate (1997) and then Full Professor (2001-2015). She moved to Cambridge in 2009, maintaining an adjunct position at SBU.

Grey was director of the Northeastern Chemical Energy Storage Centre, a U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Frontier Research Centre, (2009-2010) and then associate director (2011-2014). She is currently director of the EPSRC Centre for Advanced Materials for Integrated Energy Systems (CAM-IES). She is co-founder of Nyobolt, a battery fast-charging company. Her current research interests include the use of solid-state NMR and diffraction-based methods to determine structure-function relationships in materials for energy storage, conversion, and carbon capture. Recent honors and awards include the Hughes Medal (2020), the Körber European Science Prize (2021), and the ACS Central Science Disruptors & Innovators Prize (2022).

----------------------------

The Dresselhaus Lecture series is named in honor of Mildred "Millie" Dresselhaus, a beloved MIT professor whose research helped unlock the mysteries of carbon, the most fundamental of organic elements—earning her the nickname “queen of carbon science.” This annual event recognizes a significant figure in science and engineering from anywhere in the world whose leadership and impact echo Millie’s life, accomplishments, and values.

Read more about this lecture series: https://mitnano.mit.edu/mitnano-semin...