Will your electric car use a battery with nano-material?

Waterloo researcher awarded $1.8 million to move beyond the lithium-ion battery and advance the next generation of more powerful and longer lasting batteries.

In a world that needs increasing capabilities for energy storage, Linda Nazar finds herself in an international race to build a better battery.

Nazar, a professor of chemistry in the Faculty of Science who is cross-appointed to the Faculty of Engineering, says the race is a matter of cost and energy density. The goal is to build a low-cost battery that can provide power for longer periods of time.

It should also take up less space – the kind of battery that would make electric cars more appealing to the average driver.

“There is competition, but there’s also recognition that no one person can do it all,” says Nazar, a researcher with the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) and Canada Research Chair in Solid State Energy Materials.

Recently, Nazar received $1.8 million over four years to support her research into nanotechnology and the use of different approaches to battery chemistry. The funding from Natural Resources Canada will allow Nazar to expand Waterloo’s electrochemical energy storage laboratory.

High-risk technologies

“We’re still working with the same periodic table, but the way we are working with it has changed,” says Nazar. “We’re working with some technologies that are fairly high risk.” In particular, nanotechnology has a role to play in developing the materials for the batteries of the future – along with developing sophisticated tools for probing the underlying electrochemical reactions.

The combination of many factors will lead to real step changes in the science, says Nazar, although, “it’s not like the pharmaceutical industry, where one new drug can make a huge difference,” she says. “Energy storage batteries are remarkably complex systems that involve the chemical interplay of electrode materials, electrolytes and the interfaces between them — and that’s what makes them fascinating.”

Battery technology improved tremendously when new power sources were needed for our portable electronics. Significant advances have been made more recently to allow the development of fully electric cars such as the Tesla Model S, but more will be needed when it comes to the batteries required to store the power generated by solar panels and wind generators. “That technology is at the cusp of a revolution at the moment,” she says.

Nazar is also the lone Canadian member of a scientific team funded by the German chemical giant BASF, which also includes scientists from Germany, Israel, Switzerland and the United States, and she is a member of the USA Energy Storage Hub (JCESR).