Institute for Energy Solutions & Electric Vehicle Center: Towards More Sustainable Li-ion Battery Recycling

Abstract:
There is a growing interest in low-cost and scalable manufacturing and recycling methods for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). In this talk, I will discuss on our recent progress in innovating materials and processing technologies for more sustainable LIBs. I will first discuss our recent work on the next generation direct recycling methods, aiming to produce new electrode materials capable of matching the performance of native materials. By leveraging advanced characterizations, we study the microstructure and compositional evolution of battery materials during cycling, which are compared with the recycled materials. We demonstrate successful recycling of various battery materials to high performance active materials. Scaling up challenges will also be discussed.

Biography:
Dr. Zheng Chen is a Professor in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering, and Program of Materials Science and Engineering at UC San Diego.  His research group has been mainly focusing on 1) design and synthesis of nanostructured and polymeric materials for energy storage and conversion, and 2) development of scalable materials manufacturing recycling methods. Dr. Chen has received the 2024 ECS Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship, 2023 ECS Battery Division Early Career Award, NASA’s 2018 Early Career Faculty Award, the LG Chem Global Battery Innovation Contest (BIC) Award in 2018, and the 2018 ACF PRF New Investigator Award. He has been selected as a Scialog Fellow in Advanced Energy Storage by Research Corporation and as a participant of 2022 Germany-US and 2019 China- America Frontiers of Engineering Symposium (CAFOE), National Academy of Engineering.