CAREER: Carbon Anodes in Potassium-Ion Batteries

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CAREER 1551693 - JiThe ongoing prosperity of society relies on energy security enabled by sufficient energy supply and efficient energy storage. Stationary energy storage is the key enabler for intermittent renewable energy resources, including solar and wind. The nature of stationary applications requires the storage technologies to have low cost, long cycle life and most importantly scalability and sustainability. Although lithium-ion batteries have dominated the market in electronics and electric vehicles, lithium is generally too expensive to be used in stationary applications. This calls for alternative technologies based on earth-abundant elements, such as sodium and potassium. To date, attention has focused on sodium-ion batteries. To broaden the field, the PI has shown that a broad array of carbon materials can reversibly store potassium ions with promising performance for energy storage applications. This project will determine design principles for carbon anodes using potassium ion chemistry. On the educational side, the project will bring state-of-the-art knowledge of energy storage to underserved students in Oregon rural schools by developing a new Science-Tour program. This will be eventually expanded to include other OSU faculty. This new program will benefit a large number of students who do not have access to on campus activities at a university. Additionally, the project will integrate training of high school and undergraduate students into the research program to accelerate discoveries on campus.The technical goal of this CAREER award is to elucidate design principles for carbon anodes by determining the structure-property relationships in potassium ion batteries. The PI plans the following activities: (1) Identify the functional substructures that are responsible for K-ion storage in bulk carbon electrodes by investigating the evolving structural and kinetic properties during K-ion insertion via advanced in situ and ex situ characterizations; (2) Determine the structure-property correlation by creating new carbon structures with features controlled at nanometer and atomic scales; and (3) Develop and disseminate energy science activities to bring STEM inspiration to underserved students. This project will test the assumption that bulk carbon anodes cannot reversibly store potassium electrochemically at room temperature. Furthermore, this project will use potassium ion batteries as a platform to generate knowledge on the substructures in non-graphitic carbon anodes that are responsible for metal ion storage. This question will be addressed by exploiting the structural distortion of carbon electrodes generated by insertion of large potassium ions, which can reveal invaluable information of structural properties of non-graphitic carbons with a resolution at nanometer and atomic scales. To observe structural distortion, the project will employ neutron scattering, in situ TEM and electrochemical titration techniques. In addition, the project will draw upon the demonstrated capability of the PI on rational design of carbon local structures to reveal the impact of substructures on electrochemical performance. The unique combination of close observation and fine-tuning of carbon structures at an atomic scale will generate fundamental understanding of the structure-property relationships for carbon anodes. This will lead to elucidation of new design principles for carbon materials for metal-ion batteries. The research may cause a paradigm shift for the battery community, while initiating a new frontier on understanding and designing carbons for various purposes.