UCLA Researchers Join DOE-Funded Consortium to Develop New Aqueous Battery for Electrical Grids

A trio of UCLA faculty members is part of a U.S. Department of Energy-funded initiative to develop next-generation batteries. The effort aims to revolutionize grid-scale energy storage in support of sustainable energy sources, such as solar and wind, which can be scarce and intermittent.

Headquartered at Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the newly launched Aqueous Battery Consortium brings together 31 top energy storage technology experts as co-principal investigators from 15 research institutions across the U.S. and Canada. UCLA is projected to receive $4.73 million over nearly four-and-a-half years from the combined five-year, $62.5 million DOE award.

The UCLA research team is co-led by Sarah Tolbert, a distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry and materials science and engineering; Bruce Dunn, a distinguished professor of materials science and engineering and bioengineering, and the Nippon Sheet Glass Company Endowed Chair in Materials Science; and Yuzhang Li, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. All three researchers are also members of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.

Launched Sept. 3, the consortium was established as part of the DOE’s Innovation Hubs program aimed to address critical challenges in energy science and engineering through collaborative research and innovation. In particular, the coalition is tasked with overcoming the challenge of storing environmentally safe and inexpensive electricity on the grid at capacity levels that conventional lithium-ion batteries cannot meet. The team’s approach will be to develop battery chemistries based on non-toxic, naturally abundant oxides found in water and earth, which can scale with the enormous capacity needed for grid-scale energy storage globally. 

Although aqueous battery chemistries have a long history, (much longer than that of lithium-ion batteries), several longstanding and unresolved issues remain. To address them, the team will reexamine key topics through a modern lens. If successful, this research will produce an inexpensive and safer battery that can help bring more renewable energy sources onto the grid. Ultimately, the researchers said they hope to support electricity systems with the goal of net-zero carbon emissions.

Tolbert will lead the consortium’s multidisciplinary group on materials design and synthesis. Dunn and Li are both members of the coalition looking to further understand aqueous battery processes, with Dunn leading efforts on cathodes and Li on liquid-solid interfaces. Together, they constitute one-third of the consortium’s nine leaders in charge of overseeing six key fundamental scientific aims and three crosscutting themes.

Other Aqueous Battery Consortium collaborators are scientists and engineers from UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, San Jose State University, California State University Long Beach, Florida A&M University-Florida State University College of Engineering, North Carolina State University, Oregon State University, University of Maryland, University of Texas at Austin, University of Waterloo, the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

The Aqueous Battery Consortium is helping meet the goal of the Long Duration Storage Shot, which is part of the DOE’s Energy Earthshots Initiative aimed to increase the grid capacity and bring down the cost of energy storage. Tolbert, Dunn, and Li are also part of the DOE-funded Center for Strain Optimization for Renewable Energy (STORE) at UCLA directed by Tolbert. The center is part of the Science Foundations for Energy Earthshots projects and is researching alternative ways to improve sodium-ion batteries to match the capacity of lithium batteries.