Bioinspired green manufacturing of next generation energy storage materials

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The ubiquity of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) in portable electronic devices have led to an enormous volume of research on materials promising improved performance characteristics. Whether in terms of the amount of energy they can deliver, their operating lifetime or overall cost, there are pressing demands for the development of improved functional materials. In particular, Li-Ni-Co-Mn-oxides are attractive cathode materials due to their high achievable specific capacity and good long-term performance; they are also commercialised and widely used in the battery market. However, their synthesis typically requires extreme temperatures over long duration, contributing the vast majority of the energy costs. Furthermore, their manufacture is wasteful and is unsustainable. Hence the use of more sustainable synthesis routes has the potential to drastically reduce this expense.Learning from biology, we aim to discover new bioinspired routes to produce energy storage materials. These methods will need lower temperatures, leading to reduced energy demands, and allow for superior control of materials properties on the nanoscale. This is a radically new approach, which has never been applied to energy storage materials.