The Solid State Electrochemistry and Energy Lab (SSEEL) seeks a deeper understanding of electrochemical reactions used in energy conversion and storage. Our work is part of a broader effort by our society to achieve energy and environmental sustainability. A key factor limiting this sustainability is our (current) inability to store energy from sustainable but intermittent sources such as wind and solar power at relevant scale. Electrochemical reactions provide a unique solution to this problem by allowing electricity to be converted to fuels, and back again, or by storing electrical energy within reversibly transformable materials. Relevant technologies informing and benefitting from our work include fuel cells, electrolysis devices, batteries, and solar energy conversion.

A common theme of our research is the use of transient voltage-current response (impedance and nonlinear impedance) to probe factors limiting electrode performance or causing electrode degradation. We often couple these measurements with operando techniques to probe more directly (or locally) what is happening in or around the electrode materials during a reaction. By measuring and modeling these responses as a function of frequency, we gain deeper insights about the physics and chemistry of the reaction, and which factors limit performance. More recently we have been extending these methods to entire systems (such as stack of fuel cells in a commercial fuel cell system), and the use of data science and machine learning to interpret measured responses in terms of physics, chemistry, and operational parameters.

Please follow the links on this page to learn more about our work, and the people who are doing it!