Energy Materials Lecture Series

Tuesday, May 31
How Can One Tell if a Lithium-ion Battery will Last for 30 Years in Experiments that Only Take a Few Weeks?
Lithium ion batteries are the state-of-the-art power sources for portable electronics where 500 charge-discharge cycles and a three-year lifetime are sufficient. Li-ion batteries are now destined to power electric vehicles and be used for grid energy storage where lifetimes of ten and thirty years, respectively are needed. Experimental methods are needed so that researchers can tell whether changes to cell chemistry will improve a Li-ion battery with a lifetime of 10 or 30 years. These experiments need to only last a few weeks at most so that rapid research progress can be made. In this lecture, I will describe how this can be done.

Wednesday, June 1
The Role of Nanomaterials and Nanostructured Materials in Lithium-ion Batteries
Many so-called "high-impact" journals like Nature, Nature Materials, Science, Advanced Materials etc., have published many articles on the use of nanomaterials as electrodes for Li-ion batteries. As it turns out, the vast majority of these articles describe materials, which have no relevance at all to real devices. In this lecture I give a sober view of when nanomaterials and nanostructured materials actually have a viable use in practical Li-ion batteries. Nanostructured materials containing silicon or tin may replace graphite as the negative electrode of choice in li-ion batteries with high energy density.

Thursday, June 2
Combinatorial and High Throughput studies of electrode materials for Li-ion Batteries, Catalysts for PEM Fuel Cells and Activated Carbons for Gas Masks
The Center of Excellence in Materials Discovery at Dalhousie University has been doing combinatorial synthesis of materials for 10 years. Materials are made using either a combinatorial sputtering system or a solutions handling robot. In this lecture I will describe the synthesis and screening methods used and highlight a number of examples, which have led to important discoveries in each of the battery, fuel cell and respirator carbon area.

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Professor Jeff Dahn is recognized as one of the pioneering developers of the lithium-ion battery that is now used worldwide in laptop computers and cell-phones.  Dahn's recent work has concentrated on the application of Combinatorial Materials Science methods to battery and fuel cell materials problems.  He is the author of over 440 refereed journal papers and co-inventor of 55 inventions with patents issued or filed. 

Jeff was born in Bridgeport, Conn. in 1957 and emigrated with his family to Nova Scotia, Canada in 1970.  He obtained his B.Sc. in Physics from Dalhousie University (1978) and his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in 1982.  Dahn then worked at the National Research Council of Canada (82-85) and at Moli Energy Limited (85-90) before taking up a faculty position in the Physics Department at Simon Fraser University in 1990.  He returned to Dalhousie University in 1996.

He has always interacted strongly with industry.  During his years at Simon Fraser University (90-96) he collaborated strongly with the R+D team at NEC/Moli Energy Canada (Now E-One/Moli Energy Canada).  Dr. Dahn took up the NSERC/3M Canada Industrial Research Chair in Materials for Advanced Batteries at Dalhousie University in 1996.  Dahn now interacts strongly with 3M's programs in battery materials, fuel cell materials and respirator carbons.  The success of Dahn's research programs benefits from the quality his collaborators at 3M, in particular, Larry Krause, Leif Christensen, Kevin Eberman, Mark Obrovac (now at Dalhousie), Mark Debe, Radoslav Atanasoski, Lisa Croll and Simon Smith.

Dr. Dahn has received numerous awards including: International Battery Materials Association (IBA) Research Award (1995); Herzberg Medal, Canadian Association of Physicists (1996); ECS Battery Division Research Award (1996); Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2001); Medal for Excellence in Teaching (2009) from the Canadian Assoc. of Physicists, The Rio-Tinto Alcan Award from the Canadian Institute of Chemistry (2010) and the "Iron Man" award from the Center Court Basketball League on his retirement from play in 2010.

Event type: Seminars