The MatSE assistant professor received NSF’s “most prestigious” early-career award
Yingjie Zhang, an assistant professor in UIUC’s Materials Science and Engineering department, has just been announced as the winner of an NSF CAREER award.
According to NSF’s website, Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grants are its “most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization."
Interface science is Zhang’s area of expertise. He studies the complex surfaces and interfaces of real-life systems in which function depends heavily on these structures.
Today, he explained, the tools available for studying such interfaces are limited.
“Overall, what I would like to do is to develop new methods and tools to be able to characterize or image these interfacial structures and provide insights on the relation of such structures with the functions of complex systems in renewable energy devices, biological cells, and more,” he said.
More specifically, in his new CAREER project, he will probe the internal processes that occur at anode-electrolyte interfaces inside lithium-ion batteries. His findings should inform the development of future novel electrolytes that make it possible to create batteries that are safer, more powerful, and more durable than those of today.
To study those internal processes, he will use a new imaging method called 3D atomic force microscopy (AFM) that was recently developed by his group. It is a very high-resolution kind of scanning probe microscopy.
“As far as I know, [AFM] is the only [tool] right now that can provide images of both the liquid layers and the solid surface structures together in real time,” said Zhang. “So that’s how we can understand the interfacial nucleation and growth mechanisms directly inside a battery cell. Such internal structures are currently hidden from other existing imaging tools.”
Zhang’s CAREER work will also include several outreach activities. One is a series of “bootcamps” that will train students at UIUC, and other universities, in understanding how AFM works and the most efficient and useful ways to apply it. Another notable one will be the creation of aqueous battery demo modules to be presented in K-12 settings.
For the latter, Zhang will build a transparent glass cell that utilizes safe aqueous solutions as the electrolytes. Children will be able to experiment with it by, for example, varying the concentration of salt water placed in the cell to see how it changes the voltage output to a light bulb.
Zhang noted that the transparent cell demonstrations echo his CAREER research agenda, since in both cases the idea is to observe the internal structure of a battery and understand what’s happening inside. He hopes the demos will leave participants with a vivid sense of how batteries work and interest in learning more.
Reflecting on his research agenda, Zhang said that “if we achieve our goals as outlined in the proposal, then we will be able to tell people, you need to look into this space, to look into this type of structure, this type of composition, or this type of concentration of these electrolytes. The interfacial structure/battery performance relationship we obtain will be powerful. It will help battery folks target electrolyte structures that will enable the desired battery performance metrics.”
“Eventually,” Zhang said, “the results will power a future with efficient, safe, and renewable energy.”