Dr. Xiaoliang Wei — Purdue MSE Courtesy Faculty and Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering at Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)

Abstract: Redox flow battery is an attractive energy storage technology particularly for large-scale, long-duration stationary applications and can overcome the intermittency drawback of renewable energies. Compared to its major competitor lithium-ion batteries, flow batteries are currently facing critical challenges of low energy density, high chemical cost, and/or long-term cyclability. The benchmark vanadium flow battery is capable of long-term stability but are largely hampered by high vanadium cost and low energy density. Therefore, our research focus is on the development of alternative redox-active materials with low cost and high stability characteristics. Traditional inexpensive inorganic materials such as sulfur are substantially under-investigated because of their formidable technical drawbacks. In this talk, I will discuss our strategies to effectively tailor these materials into promising structures that can enable energy-dense, long-cycling aqueous and nonaqueous redox flow batteries. The analytical approaches and the underlying mechanisms for improvements in solubility and stability will be discussed. 

Biography: Prof. Xiaoliang Wei is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). His research interests are in electrochemical energy conversion and storage with focused areas of materials and system development, solvation chemistry, interface phenomena and mechanisms. Prof. Wei received his PhD in chemistry from Brown University in 2009 and his BS from University of Science and Technology of China in 2003. He was a staff scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) before joining IUPUI in 2018.