Our society urgently requires innovative and efficient energy storage capabilities in order to establish a carbon-neutral, sustainable energy infrastructure. Technologies based on batteries are highly promising to drive this paradigm shift, but they have yet to reach sufficient efficiency and stability to sustain global energy demands.
Advancing these technologies demands mechanistic insights into their underlying storage processes on the nano-scale and in real time. Here, I will showcase how we can utilise optical microscopy to deliver significantly new gains for the field of energy storage. Using examples from my research in batteries (see e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.10537), I will highlight the importance of understanding heterogeneity inherent to energy storage materials, and identify new avenues to push beyond current material limitations.
This presentation was recorded in conjunction with our 1851 Virtual Alumni Science Evening
