The Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) is pleased to present a Distinguished Lecture by Prof. Karim Zaghib, CEO of Volt-Age (CFREF), Professor of Chemical and Materials Engineering, Director, Collaborating Centres for Energy and Transition (C2ET), Concordia University.
Please join us on Monday, September 29, at 11:00 a.m. to hear Professor Zaghib's lecture titled "Success Story of LiFePO4 (LFP) As Cathode Material for Rechargeable Lithium Batteries: from Lab to Market".
Where: QNC 1501
When: Monday, September 29, 2025 | 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
About the lecture
Lithium-ion and solid-state battery (SSB) are now playing a central role in consumer electronic, energy storage and electric vehicles thanks to their excellent cycle life and high energy density. One of the key components that have paved the way for this success story in the past 27 years is LiFePO4 (LFP) which has served as a lithium-ion host structure for the cathode electrode. Today only LFP is used in both commercial Li-ion and SSB batteries, due their safety, low cost (cobalt free), fast charge and discharge, and over 20 years of calendar life.
In this presentation, we will show the progress of the physical chemistry of the olivine compounds since the pioneering work of Prof. John B. Goodenough. This major improvement has positioned LiFePO4 as the active cathode element of a new generation of Li-ion batteries from cell to pack, hence making a breakthrough in the technology of energy storage and electric transportation. This achievement is the fruit of about 27 years of intensive research in the electrochemical community during which chemists, electrochemists, physicists, and engineers added their efforts to understand the properties of the material, to overcome the obstacles that were met on the way, and finally to reach the state of the art enabling its ubiquitous use in technology today and in the future.
About the speaker
Karim Zaghib is a world-renowned scientist specializing in electrochemistry, rechargeable batteries (lithium-ion and solid-state), carbon, energy transition and transportation electrification. His landmark scientific publications in these fields have influenced generations of researchers. He is regularly invited to participate in international conferences as an expert speaker to address issues and share his vision concerning energy storage and new battery technologies. Following a 28-year career at Hydro-Québec, he has been Professor of Chemical and Materials Engineering at Concordia University, the CEO of the CFREF funded initiative of Volt-Age, and Director of the Collaborating Centres on Energy and Energy Transition.
As General Manager of materials development research for lithium-ion batteries at Hydro-Québec, he helped make the company the first in the world to use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) in cathodes and to develop natural graphite and nanotitanate anodes, technologies used by Tesla, Ford, Mercedes, BMW, Bolloré, CAT and BYD etc. Prof. Zaghib pioneered the first dual-electrode photobattery and high MWh energy storage based on LFP/graphite, in a joint venture with Sony and Hydro-Québec. Prof. Zaghib has also made significant contributions to electrothermics, ionic liquids and molten salts. His team's most recent advances, made in collaboration with universities, research centers and companies, are paving the way for the next generation of electric vehicle batteries and energy storage solutions, a field in which Québec and Canada are well placed to play a leading role.
Prof. Zaghib co-author of 450 publications, 970 patents and 62 licenses. His H-index is 89 with 27488 citations. He is a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society (2011), the Canadian Academy of Engineering (2017), the Royal Society of Canada (2021), and the Royal Society of Chemistry (2023). He is the only person ever to have received both the Research Award (2010) and the Technology Award (2017) of the International Battery Association. Among his many other honours, he is the recipient of the Prix du Québec Lionel-Boulet (2019), the highest distinction for industrial and applied research and development awarded by the Government of Québec, and the Kalev-Pugi Award of the Society of Chemical Industry Canada (2022). He was named Personality of the Year for 2023 by L’Actualité Magazine.