(7ju) High-Performance Energy Storage and Conversion Devices for Automotive Electrification through A2P Approach

Automotive electrification provides sustainable pathways to overcome petroleum resource limitations and meet environmental imperatives. Lithium-ion batteries and hydrogen fuel cells are the two leading candidates to power electric-drive vehicles. Battery electric vehicles based on current technology are suitable to small-vehicle low-mileage-per-day applications while the fuel cell is favored for large vehicles with long-range trips. Great efforts have been put to enhance the performance of energy conversion and storage devices. In many cases the device performance is still limited by poor efficiency, short operation life, and high cost due to instability of interface, lack of architecture optimization, and difficulty in large scale fabrication. My research interests focus on the design and synthesis of novel materials from atoms or molecules towards high-performance batteries and fuel cells as final products (A2P approach) based on the understanding of the device’s operation mechanisms. The goal is to develop high-performance and low-cost energy storage and conversion devices for practical automotive electrification.

My professional industry experience includes not only research in design and synthesis of novel functional materials for next-generation lithium-ion battery and fuel cells but also fabrication of real-world devices and failure analysis (e.g., fabrication of pouch cells and membrane electrode assembly (MEA), nondestructive and tear-down analysis of high-capacity automotive pouch cells, and post mortem analysis of MEA). My Ph D research mainly focus on synthesis of nanostructured energy materials through various synthesis platforms, such as colloidal chemistry, sol-gel chemistry, chemical vapor deposition, solvothermal synthesis, electrospinning, solid state reaction, aerosol technology and self-assembly approaches.
With the industry demand, synthetic capability and fundamental understanding of energy storage conversion, my future research will focus on materials development for automotive electrification: 1) Design and synthesis of novel materials for high-performance and low-cost energy storage and conversion devices and 2) Deep understanding of synthesis–performance-mechanism relationships through in-situ and ex-situ characterization technologies.

Selected publications:

1. Fang Liu, Qiangfeng Xiao, Haobin Wu, Fei Sun, Xiaoyan Liu, Xiaoqiong Bai, Fan Li, Zaiyuan Le, Li Sheng, Ge Wang, Mei Cai, Yunfeng Lu. Regenerative Polysulfide-Scavenging Layers Enabling Lithium–Sulfur Batteries with High Energy Density and Prolonged Cycling Life. ACS Nano 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.6b07603.

2. Qiangfeng Xiao, Meng Gu, Hui Yang, Bing Li, Cunman Zhang, Yang Liu, Fang Liu, Fang Dai, Li Yang, Zhongyi Liu, Xingcheng Xiao, Gao Liu, Peng Zhao, Sulin Zhang, Chongmin Wang, Yunfeng Lu, Mei Cai. Inward lithium-ion breathing of hierarchically porous silicon anodes. Nature Communications 2015, 6, Article number:8844. doi:10.1038/ncomms9844.

3. Qiangfeng Xiao, Mei Cai, Michael P. Balogh, Misle M Tessema, Yunfeng Lu. Symmetric Growth of Pt Ultrathin Nanowires from Dumbbell Nuclei for Use as Oxygen Reduction Catalysts. Nano Research 2012, 5, 145-151.

4. Qiangfeng Xiao, Hiesang Sohn, Zheng Chen, Daniel Toso, Matthew Mechlenburg, Z. Hong Zhou, Eric Poirier, Anne Dailly, Haiqiang Wang, Zhongbiao Wu, Mei Cai, Yunfeng Lu. Mesoporous Metal and Metal Alloy Particles Synthesized by Aerosol-Assisted Confined Growth of Nanocrystals. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, (hot paper), 51, 10546-10550.

Book Chapter

Qiangfeng Xiao, Bing Li, Fang Dai, Li Yang, Mei Cai. Application of Lithium-Ion Batteries in Vehicle Electrification. Electrochemical Energy: Advanced Materials and Technologies. Publisher: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group. Editors: Pei Kang Shen, Chao-Yang Wang, San Ping Jiang, Xueliang Sun, Jiujun Zhang. 2015

Teaching Interests:

Teaching plays a critical role in conveying scientific knowledge to students in the classroom and equipping them with the ability to analyze and solve problems in the real world. I have gained diverse teaching and mentoring experience as Teaching Assistant (TA) during my PhD training at Tulane University and UCLA. Given the teaching experience and the extensive multidisciplinary training including chemical engineering and materials science and engineering, I feel interested in teaching undergraduate and graduate-level core engineering courses, such as Thermodynamics, Transport Phenomena, Reactor Design as well as materials-related courses, such as Polymer Science and Engineering.