Dr. Vibha Kalra, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, has been awarded a pre-commercialization grant from the Pennsylvania NanoMaterials Commercialization Center entitled, "Nanofiber-based Electrodes for Efficient Lithium-based Batteries." The award is for $35,000 for a period of 6 months.
The work will focus on developing a controlled directed assembly of electron conducting material and high capacity transition metal oxides into a nanofiber-based hierarchical- porous framework. The electrodes will be fabricated via a simple and scalable electrospinning technique that uses strong electric field to accelerate and thin a polymer solution/melt jet forming nanoscale fibers. Electrode fabrication will be followed by performance testing of proposed materials in Li-ion batteries. The aim of the work is to increase the energy density of Li-batteries, which is critical for successful development of electric vehicles.