Through a new partnership between the School of Engineering and Panasonic Energy, Associate Professor of Engineering Feng Lin will lead an initiative to develop next-generation lithium-ion batteries.
Lin joined Brown as a faculty member this July, moving from Virginia Tech where he was a professor of chemistry.
He and the School of Engineering were approached by Panasonic Energy, which had taken interest in publications coming out of Lin’s Virginia Tech lab. The research offered a “deep mechanistic understanding” of the way battery materials work and has “clear implications for practical applications,” Lin wrote.
Panasonic Energy is developing more powerful and longer-lasting battery cells in response to diversifying “market needs” that now require “a new dimension of performance evolution,” a Panasonic Energy spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Herald.
Lin has “extensive expertise in battery degradation analysis, and by leveraging his insights into degradation mechanisms in our material development, we aim to realize extended-durability cells even under high-power, harsh conditions,” they added.
The research in Lin’s lab primarily focuses on materials that contribute to the development of sustainable technologies, with an emphasis on rechargeable batteries. As the collaboration with Panasonic Energy begins, Lin’s group is running systematic diagnostic tests to understand degradation in the batteries.
Rechargeable batteries like lithium-ion batteries slowly lose their performance capacity as they are charged due to “gradual degradation of the materials inside the cell,” Xiaowen Zhan, a senior research associate in Lin’s lab, wrote in an email to The Herald.
“The goal of our joint development is to identify how and why these changes occur and use that knowledge to improve the durability and power output of next-generation batteries,” he added.
Through the recently announced partnership, Lin’s group will primarily conduct research on battery material degradation, while Panasonic Energy will contribute its “industrial expertise,” Zhan wrote. The findings from Lin’s lab will inform Panasonic Energy’s battery development.
In the joint release, the School of Engineering and Panasonic Energy emphasized the need for longer-lasting rechargeable batteries, citing widespread electrification and the expansion of artificial intelligence-powered infrastructure.
“Batteries are at the heart of many technologies that will shape our future,” Lin wrote in an email to The Herald. “Better batteries mean longer-lasting devices, more sustainable transportation, more reliable power grids and new possibilities in fields like robotics, artificial intelligence, aerospace and health care.”
In negotiations with the energy company, Lin’s group sought to partner on “projects that would help (the lab’s) students and postdocs develop their professional skills and deepen their scientific understanding,” Lin said.
According to Lin, multiple undergraduate students have expressed interest in his research, which he believes is “fantastic.”
“I am now surrounded by more researchers working in batteries and sustainable energy, which will further all of our research through productive and innovative collaborations,” he wrote, adding that he is “looking for ways to integrate our research into (undergraduate students’) experiential learning.”
Ian Ritter is a senior staff writer for university news. A junior studying chemistry, he covers the graduate schools & students and admissions & financial aid beats. When he isn’t at The Herald or exploding lab experiments, you can find him playing the clarinet, watching the Mets or eating Ratty carrot cake.
