Bioinspired Materials Development for Next-Gen Batteries
Professor Dahyun Oh, Department of Materials Engineering, San José State University
Register: Here

Tues June 18 – 11:30am: Networking & Pizza; Noon-1PM: Seminar
Cost: $4 to $6
Location: EAG Laboratories – 810 Kifer Road, Sunnyvale

The demand for storing electricity is growing more rapidly than ever with the increased use of the mobile Internet of Things (IoT) devices and electric vehicles. Thus, safe and cost-effective batteries with high energy density are drawing significant interest in the field.
In this presentation, a sustainable method to develop battery electrode materials will be presented. By using biomaterials, a rod shape virus (M13 bacteriophage) or a cylindrical shape microbe (Escherichia coli, called as E. coli), the electrodes for lithium-based batteries were fabricated in an environmentally friendly way. Through the interaction between precursor ions and protein assemblies of virus molecules, a wide range of transition metal oxides nanowires has been synthesized at room temperature under aqueous synthesis conditions. Besides, microbes were used as a pore template to create an interconnected pore structure by using lengthy E. coli. These biotemplates are about one million times cheaper and are easier to remove than synthetic porogens such as silica or polystyrene beads.
The battery electrodes made in a bioinspired method have presented significant performance improvements in Li-ion batteries as well as Li-oxygen batteries. We believe that biomaterials driven material research can provide an efficient and environmentally benign way to build a high-performance device, in particular, next-generation energy storage system.
Read More: https://sites.google.com/sjsu.edu/energymaterialslab

Dahyun Oh is an assistant professor in the department of Materials Engineering at San José State University (SJSU). Her current research focuses on the development of next-generation energy storage devices including Li-ion, metal-oxygen, and solid-state batteries.
Prior to joining SJSU, Dahyun worked as a research scientist at IBM Almaden Research Center after her post-doctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She received her Ph.D. in materials science and engineering (MSE) at MIT in 2014, after obtaining her B.S. degree in MSE at Seoul National University in 2008.