Our Vision
To create an innovation ecosystem that enables discoveries in materials chemistry through fundamental understanding of electrochemical phenomena—laying the scientific foundation for breakthroughs in energy storage technologies
Our Approach
Integrate our team’s expertise and thought leadership in solvation chemistry, transport properties, and materials science with capabilities from world-leading organizations that encompass artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate:
- Materials research
- Computational modeling
- Advanced spectroscopic and imaging characterization tools
Our Strategy
ESRA’s research will provide the scientific underpinning to address some of the nation’s most pressing battery challenges, including safety, high-energy density, and long-duration batteries made from inexpensive, abundant materials.
To meet those challenges, ESRA is organized around three scientific thrusts and three crosscutting endeavors to create a new paradigm where cutting edge tools combine with data science and automation to accelerate the discovery of new energy storage materials.
Scientific thrusts
ST 1: Solvation architecture
Purpose: Explore the unknown state of desolvated electrolyte under nano-confinement that gives rise to unusual properties in ion transport, ion selectivity, and interfacial chemistries
Five-year goal: Achieve unprecedented molecular level control of reactivity, ion selectivity, and directional transport through precise manipulation of solvation architecture
ST 2: Enabling soft matter omics
Purpose: Bridge the knowledge gap and uncover new mechanisms, in the poorly understood organic polymeric electrode materials, to capture the dynamic behavior of soft ion conductors, electro-chemo-mechanical phenomena at longer length and time scales, and interfaces
Five-year goal: : Quantify molecules with redox capabilities and/or superionic transport properties that translate into function and dynamics in a complex electrochemical cell
ST 3: Ion choreography
Purpose: Bridge the knowledge gap and uncover new mechanisms, in the poorly understood organic polymeric electrode materials, to capture the dynamic behavior of soft ion conductors, electro-chemo-mechanical phenomena at longer length and time scales, and interfaces
Five-year goal: : Quantify molecules with redox capabilities and/or superionic transport properties that translate into function and dynamics in a complex electrochemical cell
Crosscuts: Facilitating the scientific thrusts
Crosscut 1: Materials acceleration platform: Applies cutting-edge AI to automated synthesis and characterization to accelerate materials discovery
Crosscut 2: Correlative characterization: Leverages the generational opportunities of the upgrades to the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne and Advanced Light Source at Berkeley Lab to advance our ability to observe ion-matter motion and interactions at unprecedented temporal and spatial scales
Crosscut 3: Diverse talent development: Integrates the resources of ESRA’s 3 national labs and 11 university partners to train, develop, and mentor a diverse workforce
Our Impact
Armed with new knowledge, ESRA aims to:
- enable ultra-high energy density energy storage
- enhance transport of ions in solids and soft matter by an order of magnitude
- suppress unwanted parasitic reaction by a decade
- stabilize metastable active species while in a state of rest and promote their reactivities in electrochemical processes
These basic science breakthroughs will enable novel metal-air rechargeable cells that have ultra-high energy density, solid-state cells beyond lithium chemistry, and organic soft materials that enable multi-electron redox energy storage.
