Department of Mechanical Engineering – Engineering Mechanics Graduate Seminar: Dr. Partha Mukherjee, Texas A&M University; Thursday, Apr. 17, 2014 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Room 103 EERC Bldg.
Title: Mesoscale Perspective of Electrode Physics in Energy Storage
Recent years have witnessed an enormous interest in energy storage (battery) to enable vehicle electrification, renewable energy utilization as well as accommodating an ever-increasing demand in powering myriad portable electronic devices. In particular, a critical imperative is to accelerate innovation toward improved performance, life and safety of lithium-ion batteries, the primary candidate for electric drive vehicles. Lithium-ion batteries are complex, dynamical systems which include a multitude of coupled physicochemical processes encompassing electronic/ionic/diffusive transport
in solid/electrolyte phases, electrochemical and phase change reactions and diffusion induced stress generation in hierarchical, multi-scale porous electrodes. While innovations in nanomaterials and nanoarchitectures have spurred the recent advancements, fundamental understanding of the underlying thermo-mechano-electrochemical interactions is of paramount interest. In this presentation, a
mesoscale perspective of electrode physics for lithium-ion batteries will be elucidated.
Partha P. Mukherjee is currently an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU). Before joining TAMU in 2012, he worked for 4 years in the U.S. Department of Energy Labs, as a Staff Scientist (2009-2011) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and as a Director’s research fellow (2008-2009) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. Prior to PhD studies, he worked as a Consulting Engineer for 4 years at Fluent India Pvt. Ltd, a fully-owned subsidiary of Fluent Inc., currently Ansys Inc. His research interests include mesoscale physics and stochastics of transport, materials and manufacturing aspects in energy storage and conversion (batteries and fuel cells).