Joaquín Rodríguez-López designs batteries for a sustainable energy future - lithium ion polymer battery

Jokin Rodricks
Lopez was shocked by the world of electrochemistry.
He said that when he realized in college that he could connect the machine to some wires and turn chemicals into energy, he was "sold completely ".
Today, he is addressing a major obstacle to expanding America's affordable renewable energyS.
Grid: storage.
A mobile battery that stores a lot of energy generated by wind and solar energy needs to maintain this energy more effectively until the sun does not shine or the breeze disappears.
In the lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana.
Rodríguez-Champagne
López, 35, has designed a new type of material that can store charges in these batteries, thus improving the efficiency of the batteries.
He won't stop there.
"We designed new ways to look at the material and we designed better materials," he said . ".
Jeffrey Moore, his partner at the University of Illinois, praised him for his "deep knowledge and . . . . . . Share its will. ” Rodríguez-
Lopez has always had a community. Focus mentality
He grew up in Mexico and entertained at home for hours.
But he said that at school, he will be with children who do not have good academic performance.
He likes to help them.
Today, he is still drawn to the collaboration, working with Moore and others through the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, an initiative funded by the United StatesS.
The Department of Energy has moved new battery and fuel cell technologies from research labs to commercialize.
"He really showed the ability to get the team to work together for common goals," Moore said . ".
An important goal of material science today is ().
Lithium everywhere
Ion batteries provide powerful power for mobile phones and laptops, but it is not necessarily the best way to store the massive amount of energy generated by wind turbines or solar panelsLópez says.
Therefore, a major focus in his lab is to improve the mobile battery.
A mobile battery has two large tanks with solution, one with positive electricity and one with negative electricity.
The tank membrane is separated and the two solutions meet and undergo chemical reactions to generate an electron stream or current.
Make a lithium
The ion battery stores more charge and needs to amplify its electrodes with positive and negative electricity made of expensive materials.
However, to expand the size of the mobile battery, it is only necessary to increase the size of the liquid tank at a small cost.
"You don't have a big electrode, but you have a big tank," said Rod Ritz . "López.
Storing large amounts of power generated by wind or solar energy for later use is a simpler way.
But in today's mobile battery,
Driving particles sometimes leak onto the membrane and waste energy. Rodríguez-
Lopez and his colleagues have designed something that can dissolve well in the liquid but cannot cross the barrier.
These polymers were described in 2014 as connecting ten or even hundreds of smaller units in a series of shapes.
Particles store and discharge electrical energy in the battery through a series of chemical reactions that take place step by step along the polymer unit, as if the flame moved up. When Rodríguez-
López started the study a few years ago, a side project at the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, where George Khatri is a material scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory. , is director.
Now, cratelli says, thanks to rodríd.
Lopez, this work is the main focus of the work of the center. Rodríguez-
However, Lopez's idea is more important than designing new materials.
He's still using new technology to figure out how they're doing it so he can troubleshoot more rationally and finally get the molecules to do what he wants to do.
For example, he has become an expert in scanning an electrochemical microscope so that he can observe the movement of electrons as the chemical reaction moves along his long molecule.
He uses this technology to target the ideal performance in the battery.
Rodras' future
Lopez says he wants to bring more biological effects to his molecules. designing work.
After all, he says, cells are filled with a lot of proteins that target specific work.
For example, some people can repair themselves at the time of a fracture, while others can repair themselvesdestruct.
He says understanding the complexity of nature can help him design battery materials that react in a more complex way. ways.