This is a past event.

Apparao Rao from Clemson University will present at this week's Physics Colloquium.

Rao's presentation is titled "Sustainable Batteries for Future Energy Storage."

The seminar will be presented in person at 4 p.m. on Thursday (Sep. 5) in Fisher 139.

*This talk is made possible through the generous support of the Jim ’66 and Shelley Williams Applied Physics Annual Fund.

ABSTRACT:

In today’s electronic age, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are ubiquitous. Compared with the lead-acid versions that have dominated the battery market for decades, lithium-ion batteries can charge faster and store more energy for the same amount of weight. This leap in the development of energy-dense batteries results from recent advances in battery materials, which will be presented in my talk. Specifically, scalable methods for synthesizing electrode materials and clever strategies that help battery electrodes overcome the detrimental volume expansion/contraction during cycling will be presented. While energy-dense batteries make our electronic gadgets and electric cars lighter and longer-lasting, they also have disadvantages. They contain a lot of energy, and if they catch fire, they burn until all that stored energy is released. Therefore, safety is essential to battery sustainability, particularly considering that flammable organic molecules still dominate the electrolyte formulation. A rational design to make electrolytes non-combustible will also be presented. Such battery research breakthroughs are enabling the development of safe, low-cost, energy-efficient batteries.

BIO:

Apparao Rao is, currently, the Robert A. Bowen Endowed Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Clemson University and the founding director of the Clemson Nanomaterials Institute. He is known for developing Raman spectroscopy as a versatile tool for characterizing carbon nanomaterials and developing liquid-injection-based synthesis methods for carbon nanotubes. His current research focuses on the many applications of carbon and other nanomaterials in energy generation and storage technologies. Rao is the co-editor of two scientific books, the author of invited book chapters and reviews, and scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals with an h-index of 100. Because of his sustained research in nanomaterials and for building competitiveness in the State of South Carolina, he received in 2014 the State’s highest honor - the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Scientific Research.