Sheng Dai was recently named the recipient of the highly sought-after 2019 ACS Award in Separations Science & Technology and the International Mesoporous Society’s 2018 IMMA Award. He was bestowed these honors for his significant and sustained contributions to the current knowledge of porous materials and ionic liquids for energy-related separation.
Dai’s research has significantly impacted both the synthesis and characterization of these unique materials for a number of separation processes and energy storage. He is an internationally recognized expert in the synthesis and characterization of porous materials and ionic liquids for separation chemistry and was included in the 2015 Thompson-Reuters list of the world’s most influential chemists.
Dai’s work includes publishing more than 600 peer-review papers, 28 patents, and according to the h index of 94 based on Web of Science (as of Sept. 16, 2018), his papers have been cited more than 36,000 times. Dai also submitted a proposal for his research on TiNb2O7 based lithium ion batteries and received a $720,000 grant to continue that work.
“Commercial lithium ion batteries using graphite as an anode can easily result in lithium plating during extreme fast charging, leading to fast battery fading and safety issues. TiNb2O7 (TNO) has a high theoretical capacity of 387 mAh g-1 with an average operation voltage of 1.66 V vs. Li/Li+, which is far from the lithium plating voltage, therefore, the TNO-based lithium ion batteries are much safer than graphite based ones for transportation applications, particularly for extremely fast charging applications,” Dai says.
In this project, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will collaborate with Xiaoguang Sun and Jianlin Li at Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL) to develop TNO and nickel-rich lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) based lithium ion batteries for extreme fast charging applications.