ReSET Project Descriptions

MENTOR:  Yifei Mo, MSE Department and MEI²
RESEARCH AREA: Atomistic Modeling
REU Student Majors: MSE, physics, chemical engineering, chemistry

PROJECT: Next-generation energy storage and conversion technologies require new high-performance materials. This REU project will focus on using atomistic modeling to help understand the mechanisms that enhance material behavior in energy systems and to predict new materials for these new energy technologies. In the REU project, the students will focus on the electrode and electrolyte materials currently used for Li-ion batteries and beyond Li-ion batteries (lithium metal, Na-ion, multi-valent ion, etc.). The student will use atomistic modeling packages such as VASP and LAMMPS and as well as Python for their calculations. The student will perform atomistic modeling for a range of materials in order to determine properties of those materials. [20] In particular, the students will perform DFT calculations to evaluate the voltage profile as a function of battery cycling. This allows students to understand the thermodynamics of materials chemistry governing the energy density of Li-ion batteries. The students will also evaluate the phase stability of materials in a range of environments, allowing them to understand how the synthesis environments and applied electrochemical potential impact materials stability. The students will also calculate the atom diffusion barriers and pathways in these materials, since these fundamental materials properties govern the power performance of the battery. The student will then run simulations of altered materials in order to explore new materials with better performance. These simulations will focus on new dopants for improving the above materials properties, enabling students to explore the computation materials design and discovery. The students will master a wide range of atomistic modeling computation techniques for materials and will also obtain enhanced fundamental understanding of key concepts in their core courses, such as thermodynamics, kinetics, materials in energy, etc. The outcome of this project may advance the materials development to enable next generation energy storage and conversion technologies. 

MENTOR: Ichiro Takeuchi, MSE Department and MEI²
RESEARCH AREA: Combinatorial synthesis and thin film characterization
REU Student Majors: MSE, physics, chemical engineering, chemistry

PROJECT: Dr. Takeuchi’s laboratory is currently working on combinatorial thin film synthesis and characterization of phase change memory materials, thermoelectric materials, energy storage materials, and thermoelastic materials. In the combinatorial approach, they make composition spreads and thin film libraries mapping large composition ranges on individual wafers in order to rapidly explore novel materials with enhanced physical properties. REU students will have the opportunity to participate in the synthesis of samples using approaches such as pulsed layer deposition as well as measurements of various functional properties. The class of materials the participants explore will vary from year to year. Because the class of materials will vary from year to year, the functional properties measured will also vary from year to year. Examples of properties that may be measured include resistivity, electrical and magnetic susceptibility, capacitance, and ionic transference number. Students who participate in this project will learn how composition affects properties and how linear algebra plays a role in analyzing data.

MENTOR: Paul Albertus, ChBE Department
RESEARCH AREA: batteries, electro-chemistry
REU Student Majors: MSE, ChemE, Chemistry

MENTOR: Mentor: Eric Wachsman, MSE/ChBE Departments and MEI²
RESEARCH AREA: Solid State Batteries
REU Student Majors: Materials science and engineering, chemical engineering, chemistry, physics
RET Teacher Subject Area:  Chemistry, physics, technology

PROJECT: The Wachsman lab is at the forefront of renewable energy research involving high temperature ceramics. His advances in fundamental ionic transport and electrocatalysis have revolutionized solid state batteries (SSBs), solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC's), ion transport membranes, and solid state sensors. These technologies are currently being commercialized and changing the landscape of energy. The deployment and continued development of these devices will increase the flexibility of how and when energy is used and reduce energy costs as well. In this REU project, students will synthesize electrolyte and electrode materials, assist in cell assembly and determine capacity and energy density as a function of charge rate and temperature. They will also evaluate materials and cell performance by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and other techniques depending on sponsored agreement requirements. This project will familiarize the participant with processing and characterization techniques used in the manufacture of electronic ceramics as well as solid state batteries. While this project will provide all students with processing and analysis skills that are useful in future internships, graduate school or battery and fuel cell manufacturing, it offers the opportunity for more advanced students to participate in fundamental investigations of ionic transport in solids and charge transfer across interfaces. Students will have the opportunity to work with post-docs, graduate and undergraduate students.

MENTOR: Timothy Koeth, MSE Department, IREAP, MEI2 and Institute for Physical Science & Technology
RESEARCH AREA: Radiation interactions with matter, materials for radiation detection
REU student majors: MSE, chemistry, physics and applied disciplines

PROJECT: The goal of the effort is to generate correction factors for detectors deployed in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. We are studying the radiation damage to the sensing element of charged particle detectors specifically used in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector during high energy (5TeV/nucleon) lead-lead (Pb-Pb) collisions. (The collisions result in aquark-gluon plasma – the state of our universe for the first 3us after the bigbang). Our detector, the Spectator Reaction Plane Detector (SRPD), is comprised of a pixelated array if GE213 quartz tiles which converts a neutron-induced electromagnetic shower into positional information about individual Pb-Pb collisions. This works well, however, the damage that the quartz pixels suffer from interaction of the high-energy electrons and photons reduce the detector’s signal output in a strongly non-linear schedule which is not yet understood. Using MSE’s in-house Radiation Facilities’ Electron Linear Accelerator (Linac) and 60Co Panoramic Gamma Irradiator we are able to quickly recreate the equivalent CERN doses and characterize the dynamic damage effects of high dose irradiation. We are characterizing optical transmission degradation, as well as exploring material damage mitigation from both self-annealing and active annealing techniques to provide detector calibration correction factors. The REU students will participate and or lead in sample preparation, sample irradiation, optical characterization, data reduction and analysis, literature review and in report preparation. The REU students will be expected to participate in manuscript preparation and will be co-authors on papers submitted to scholarly journals. 

MENTORS: Gary Rubloff and David Stewart,  MSE Department and MEI²
RESEARCH AREA: Thin Film Batteries
REU Student Majors: Materials science & engineering, chemical engineering, chemistry, physics

PROJECT: The goal of this project is to study the growth of lithium dendrites through solid electrolytes by creating an easily controlled model system. Lithium dendrite growth is the primary cause of catastrophic failure in lithium ion batteries, and is supposed to be suppressed by solid state electrolytes. However, studies have shown that lithium dendrites can grow along grain boundaries through solid electrolytes, and that this growth may depend on the chemistry of the grain boundary. The solid electrolyte LiPON typically has no grain boundaries for dendrite growth, but an artificial grain boundary can be made, which allows dendrites to grow. In the ALD Nanostructures Laboratory, we have years of experience growing LiPON electrolytes  and common grain boundary materials such as lithium carbonate and lithium oxide using atomic layer deposition (ALD). ALD allows for extremely fine control of the composition and thickness by using chemical reactions to grow materials in an atom-by-atom way. In this project, the researcher would use ALD to produce artificial grain boundaries between LiPON layers, and then use electrochemistry to move lithium across the boundary and study the effects of different compositions and thicknesses. This project will give students experience with atomic scale chemical synthesis of materials, battery testing, and applications of electrochemistry while working on solid-state battery projects driven by undergrad and graduate students providing many opportunities for interaction and collaboration.

MENTOR:  Gottlieb Oehrlein, MSE Department and MEI²
RESEARCH AREA: Low temperature plasma catalysis
REU student majors: MSE, physics, chemistry, chemical engineering

PROJECT: The research in Oehrlein’s lab focuses on low temperature plasma-catalysis which is an emerging area that lies at the intersection of environmental science, energy, materials science, plasma science and technology. The goal of the research is to obtain an understanding of the behavior and performance of novel catalysts in low temperature plasma (LTP) environments for chemical conversion of hydrocarbons, and other precursors of fuels, fertilizer, etc. In particular, we are using LTP to enhance thermal catalyst activity for conversion of nitrogen and oxygen to nitrogen oxides. Such oxides are of interest as intermediates in the nitrogen fixation process. The enhancement effect results from the interaction of chemically reactive species produced by plasma with the catalyst surface. While numerous reports have shown synergy effects of plasma assisted catalysis, the nature of the synergistic interactions is unclear, and spectroscopic data on surface species and variation with process conditions are lacking. In this work, Diffuse Reflectance Infrared Fourier Transform Spectroscopy (DRIFTS) and gas phase FTIR are used to characterize the catalyst surface and downstream gas products during treatment by an atmospheric pressure plasma jet (APPJ). The research is focused on characterizing surface processes that take place on the catalyst surface as plasma conditions are varied, and the yield of products changes. REU students could work on a project related to the use of plasma-catalysis for producing fertilizers, instead of Haber-Bosch processes, by employing such in-situ optical techniques.

MENTOR: Hosam Fathy, Mechanical Engineering Dept. and MEI²
RESEARCH AREA: Control Optimization
REU Student Majors: Mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, engineering

PROJECT: Potential research experiences in Dr. Fathy’s Control Optimization laboratory will focus on the management of energy systems to maximize their performance, efficiency, and longevity. Projects will include maximum power point tracking for photovoltaic systems, as well as health-conscious charge/discharge control in lithium-ion, lithium-sulfur, and vanadium redox flow batteries. These projects were chosen to be appropriate for rising 2nd and 3rd year undergraduate students with no previous research experience. They can be adjusted to student background and the faculty mentor will provide enough information for each REU participant to see how their work can be used in applications. The projects are designed to allow for the student to be a co-author in a refereed journal article as well as conference publications. This will be beneficial to all students but will be especially useful for those students that come from institutions without a PhD program or an established undergraduate research program.

MENTOR: Shenqiang Ren, MSE Department and MEI² 
RESEARCH AREA: Printed Electronics for Extreme Environments

PROJECT: 3D print electronic ink materials for the development of printed sensor electronics for real-time temperature, pressure and environmental conditions monitoring.

MENTOR: Mohamad Al-Sheikhly, MSE Department and MEI²
RESEARCH AREA: Membrane development
REU Student Majors: Materials science and engineering, chemical engineering, chemistry
RET Teacher Subject Area:  Chemistry, physics, technology

PROJECT: The objective of the project is to design, synthesis and analysis of anhydrous fuel cell membranes that can operate at temperatures above 100°C utilizing radiation grafting. Operating at higher temperatures improves performance and reliability for fuel cell applications: increasing proton mobility, enhancing reaction kinetics, with increased catalysis activity and reduced carbon monoxide poisoning. Traditional polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) do not operate efficiently above 100°C because water is used as a proton conductive medium though the Grotthuss hopping mechanism. By substituting water with protic ionic liquids and grafting onto fluorocarbon films, a new proton conductive network solid state PEM has been developed. Polymer electrolyte membranes (PEMs) can be synthesized using indirect radiation grafting of heterocyclic protic ionic liquid monomers; 4-vinylpyridine and 5-vinylpyrimidine onto fluorocarbon substrates. Through this research, indirect radiation grafting will be adapted to covalently bond ionic liquids onto fluorocarbon substrates to synthesize PEMs.  Our aim is to synthesize ionic liquid PEMs that have proton conductivities greater than 10-3 S/cm above 100°C and performance that is independent of humidity conditions. We will elucidate the mechanisms of the relationship between the chemical properties and structure of the grafted ionic liquids that affects the proton conductive mechanisms of the PEMs. The data generated through this research will further the development of anhydrous PEM through radiation grafting, to achieve higher proton conductivity, performance, and reliability. The student or teacher working will not only learn about polymer synthesis, they will learn to use and analyze characterization techniques such as FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy), DMA (Dynamic Mechanical Analysis), DSC (Differential Scanning Calorimetry) and AFM (Atomic Force Microscopy) that are used in polymer science/manufacturing, materials science and engineering in general.

MENTOR: Liangbing Hu, MSE Department, MEI² and Center for Materials Innovation
Research Area: Nanomanufacturing
REU Student Majors: MSE, chemical engineering, chemistry, physics

PROJECT: Ceramics are an important class of materials with a range of applications owing to their high thermal, mechanical, and chemical stability. However, conventional ceramic sintering techniques suffer from long processing times and poor compositional control from volatile element loss. As such, the fast screening and optimization of ceramic materials are hampered by these limitations. We have developed an ultrafast high-temperature sintering (UHS) process for the fabrication of ceramic materials by radiative heating under an inert atmosphere. We have demonstrated several examples of the UHS process to show its potential utility and applications, including advancements in solid-state batteries, multicomponent structures, and high-throughput materials screening with the help of computational tools. In this project, interested REU students will gain knowledge on the science and technology of nanomanufacturing with a focus on extreme materials using UHS. The REU students will have hands-on experiences with materials preparation, UHS synthesis, materials characterization and performance evaluation during the large scale UHS manufacturing and testing process. They will gain knowledge about materials and design while solving scientific problems by working closely with graduate student mentors. They will also have the opportunity to develop new ceramic materials by themselves using UHS for energy and catalysis applications.