Research on diversified post-lithium battery landscape is strongly emerging, where different chemistries promise optimization for different applications tackling sustainability, cost, energy density, lifespan, and safety issues. This symposium focuses on post-lithium battery technologies: Na, K, multivalent ion and metal batteries, regarding novel battery chemistries, materials discovery, electrochemical mechanistic understanding, interphases and interfaces, high power electrodes and electrolytes, advanced characterization, electrode processing, and cell design. Also, we encourage submissions from both academia and industry partners, to bridge the knowledge gap between the two sectors and spark new ideas and collaborations.
- Post-lithium battery systems (e.g., Na, K, Ca, Mg, Al, hybrid-ion, metal anodes, conversion cathodes, etc.)
- Electrode materials discovery
- Electrolyte design (including organic, aqueous, and ionic liquid)
- Interfacial processes and engineering, including solid-state considerations
- Charge storage mechanisms
- Advanced characterization (e.g., in situ, operando)
- Modelling, machine learning and AI-guided electrode/electrolyte development
- Battery materials manufacturing and electrode processing
Dr Yang Xu is an Associate Professor in Energy Storage in the Department of Chemistry at University College London (UCL). He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). He carried out his postdoctoral research at Boston College (US) and the University of Alberta (Canada) and then worked as a Senior Scientist at Technical University of Ilmenau (Germany). He joined the Department of Chemistry at University College London (UCL) as an Assistant Professor in 2019 and became an Associate Professor in 2023. He is leading a team at UCL Chemistry working on next-generation battery materials and chemistries, particularly potassium-based, focusing on high energy density cathode materials, cation intercalation mechanism, metal anodes, and anionic redox activity. He has had nearly 90 publications in internationally leading journals including J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Joule, Matter, Nat. Commun., Energy Environ. Sci., Adv. Mater., etc. He has received research fundings from various funders including the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Faraday Institution, the Royal Society (RS), the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the Leverhulme Trust, and UCL. He was awarded the MINE Outstanding Young Scientist Award (2019), the RS Short Industry Fellowship (2020) and the STFC Early Career Award (2023). He serves as a member of the editorial boards of JPhys. Energy (IOPP) and ACS Appl. Energy Mater. (ACS), the advisory boards of J. Mater. Chem. A and Mater. Adv. (RSC), and the youth editorial boards of Sci. China Mater. (Springer) and eScience (Elsevier).
Philipp Adelhelm is a physical chemist and works at the interface between the research disciplines of materials science and electrochemistry. His current main interest is research on sustainable batteries.
After studying materials science at the University of Stuttgart, he moved to the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam (Department of Prof. Antionetti / Smarsly, 2005-2007) for his doctoral project. This was followed by a 2-year postdoctoral stay at the University of Utrecht (Prof. de Jongh) and then a position as a junior research group leader at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen (Prof. Janek, 2009-2015). From 2015-2019 he was a professor at the Institute for Technical Chemistry and Environmental Chemistry at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
He has been a professor at the Institute for Chemistry at Humboldt-University since 2019 and heads a joint research group on operando battery analysis at the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB).
Professor Qiong Cai is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Professor in Sustainable Energy and Materials at the University of Surrey. She received BEng and MEng degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University, a PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh and subsequently carried out postdoctoral research at Imperial College London prior to joining Surrey. Her research focuses on multiscale materials design for sustainable energy conversion and storage including batteries, electrolysers, and catalytic chemical conversion for achieving net-zero. Her research has been funded by various funding bodies including UKRI EPSRC, Faraday Institution, SUPERGEN H2FC Hub, Horizon Europe, Royal Society, Henry Royce Institute and industry. Currently, she is the work package leader for AI-assisted multiscale modelling on the Horizon Europe funded OPERA consortium, and the hydrogen end use theme leader on the UK Hub for Research Challenges in Hydrogen and Alternative Liquid Fuels (UK-HyRES). She has published 160 peer-reviewed journal papers and supervised 17 PhD students and 12 postdocs as the primary supervisor. She is the Associate Editor of ASME Journal of Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage and sits at the Strategic Advisory Board for the UK GW-SHIFT and EU FULL-MAP consortiums.
Since the 1st of October 2023, Sonia Dsoke holds a Professorship for “Electrochemical Energy Carriers and Storage” at the Department of Sustainable Systems Engineering (INATECH), University of Freiburg, she leads a group “Innovative Battery Materials” at Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) and she is member of the Freiburger material center (FMF).
At the international level, she is the chair of Division 3 (electrochemical energy conversion and storage) of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE), one of the largest electrochemical communities in the world.
From 2017 until September 2023 Sonia Dsoke was the leader of a multidisciplinary group at the Institute for Applied Materials – Energy Storage Systems (KIT, Germany). In the same period, she was the deputy director of the platform CELEST and a spokesperson for Research Unit A (electrode materials) in the Cluster of Excellence POLiS dealing with “post-lithium” battery research. Previously she led an independent young research group focused on designing novel electrodes for Hydrid Battery-Supercapacitors at ZSW-Ulm (Germany). She also had industrial experience at an Italian battery manufacturing company FAAM (in 2009) and she was a researcher at the University of Camerino (Italy), where she also obtained her PhD in the field of Li-ion batteries.
Sonia Dsoke was honored with the Brigitte-Schlieben-Lange Programm Grant (2017-2019, Ministry of Science and Culture, Baden-Württemberg) and a Young Investigator Group Grant (2012-2016, Federal Ministry of Education and Research) within the framework “Energy Storage Initiative”.
Her actual main research subjects are the development of novel advanced functional materials for supercapacitors, lithium, and post-lithium ion batteries, with a special focus on tackling challenges of novel battery concepts such as Na, K, Mg, Ca, and Al batteries.
Fabian Jeschull