Robert House

The development of the lithium-ion battery has ushered in a revolution in portable electronic devices, and they are now seen as the energy storage technology of choice to enable the transition from the internal combustion energy to all-electric vehicle and from gas and coal electricity generation to renewable.

Despite the indisputable successes of the Li-ion battery, there are growing concerns about the financial and environmental costs of this technology, particularly surrounding the sourcing of critically constrained elements Li, Ni and Co upon which state-of-the-art Li-ion batteries are heavily dependent.

Over the course of my RAEng Research Fellowship 'Disordered cathode materials for sustainable batteries beyond Li-ion', I will be investigating new battery chemistries based on earth-abundant elements such as Na, Mn, Mg and Fe which represent more sustainable alternatives. My research will focus on synthesising and studying the behaviour of new cathode materials which exploit structural disorder to achieve fast ion-conduction and high capacities for the next generation of rechargeable battery.