Achieving sustainability and addressing climate change issues requires reliable energy materials and devices, such as next-generation batteries, energy-efficient electronics, lightweight and strong structural materials. As we are pushing materials to their extremes, e.g., for applications in polar regions, deep sea, and space, materials with intrinsic and extrinsic defects are often exposed to complex loading conditions, such as dynamic mechanical stress, electric field, chemical reaction, and extreme temperatures and thermal gradient. Failure occurs across multiple scales - from angstroms to meters, from picoseconds to decades.
Our group integrates material synthesis/processing, advanced manufacturing, advanced characterization, multiphysics modelling, and analytics to understand the failure mechanisms of materials and devices, and engineers strategies to mitigate and control the failure for energy and sustainability applications.
Research Mission
Our group is committed to advancing the boundary of knowledge through creative thinking, collaborative spirit, and rigorous research.
We discover - understand the extremes of materials and how they fail across length and time scales.
We engineer - develop reliable materials and devices for energy and sustainability
Research Themes
Development of multiscale and multiphysics mechanical characterization platform
Our group continues to grow expertise on multiscale mechanical characterization of materials using advanced atomic force microscopy (AFM), nanoindentation, micro and macro-mechanical testing. We develop platforms that couple multiscale mechanical characterzation with other multiphysics driving forces, including electrical, chemical, thermal loadings in controlled environments (e.g., controlled humidity, inert gases).
Electro-chemo-thermo-mechanics of solid-state batteries
Solid-state batteries (SSBs) are promising energy storage technologies that potentially offer improved safety, high energy density, and fast charging. However, unique and critical challenges exist in SSBs due to the solid-solid contacts. In this theme, we investigate how the coupled fields govern the behaviour and failure of SSBs and provide design guidelines to improve reliability. We are particularly interested in 1) solid-solid contacts under coupled driving force, 2) the effect of mechanics on electrochemistry of ion-conducting solids and vice versa, 3) engineering strategies (stress, interface, and defects) to improve SSB reliability, 4) scalable processing and manufacturing of solid electrolytes and SSBs.
Nanoscale and mesoscale mechanics of low-dimensional materials and interfaces
Nanomaterials often exhibit exceptional mechanical properties (e.g., strength and stiffness) due to scarcity of defects and are often used as reinforcement nanofillers in composites; however, translating the remarkable mechanical properties from nanoscale to macroscale is a long-sought but still unsatisfactory endeavour. In this research theme, we are interested in answering the following scientific and engineering questions. 1) Understanding: How does the interplay of stress, defect, time, temperature, and chemistry affect the reliability of nanomaterials and interfaces/interphases? 2) Design: How can we engineer and program the intrinsic and interfacial mechanics of nanomaterials? 3) Manufacturing: how can we precisely control the arrangement of nanomaterials (i.e., microstructure) in composites?