As a society, we are at the height of our problematic reliance on fossil-derived energy, with alarming shortages of imported supplies and devastating fluctuations in price. Full transition to sustainable and locally produced energy must therefore be prioritised. This demand calls for a greater diversification of energy storage chemistries, beyond Li-ion, as current Li-based technologies rely on critical or expensive raw materials (e.g. Li, Co, Ni, Cu, graphite), with largely negative socio-environmental impacts of extraction and high risk of supply disruption. In response to this need, our symposium invites contributions on post Li-ion battery research, with special focus on operando characterisation techniques and advanced manufacturing methods. We are aiming to cover developments on understanding and controlling materials degradation and interfacial evolution, and engineering strategies towards accelerating the commercial introduction of new systems. Our symposium is a unique opportunity for researchers, engineers and industry to exchange knowledge on the latest post-Li battery technologies and establish fruitful collaborations and projects.
- Post Li-ion technologies
- Operando characterisation techniques
- SEI understanding and engineering
- Manufacturing methods and device engineering
- Solid-solid and solid-liquid interfaces
Heather is a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London.
She obtained her PhD in 2017 from Imperial College developing covalent modification strategies on carbon nanomaterials. She was a postdoctoral research associate at Queen Mary University of London and Imperial College, where her research interests shifted to investigating charge storage mechanisms in sodium-ion battery anodes, and later a Faraday Institution Research Fellow, working on the development of engineered carbon hosts for sulfur cathodes in lithium-sulfur batteries.
Heather was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2023, allowing her to establish an independent research team exploring sustainable materials for structural energy storage.
Rosalía Cid BarrenoAfter a master’s in physics, he obtained his doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne University in Paris on nanomaterials and electron microscopy. Then, he worked for 5 years on energy materials and in situ experiments at the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. Since 2015, he has been a researcher at the CNRS in the LRCS laboratory and RS2E network (French Battery Network) in Amiens, France. As senior scientist, he studies the dynamics of lithiation in Li-ion battery materials in multi-scale and multimodal modes based on the development of in situ/operando methods via TEM (liquid & 4DSTEM) and X-ray techniques (STXM-XANES). His research is now heavily involved in the use and development of machine/deep learning tools for computer vision, image processing and big data analysis. He is also responsible for the electron/X-ray microscopy platform of the RS2E network and recently co-founder of the startup PreDeeption on predicting battery life, for which he was awarded the CNRS innovation RISE prize.