Gui-Liang XU

The two main concerns for an electric car driver are: how far an electric car can travel and how safe its batteries are. The traditional approaches of boosting energy density and guaranteeing the security of the batteries rely primarily on trial and error. Gui-Liang Xu, a principal investigator from the Argonne National Laboratory in the United States, decided to go for a smarter solution and rely less on luck.

For many years, he used cutting-edge characterization techniques to deeply understand the fundamental scientific problems that batteries face during the charging and discharging process to reveal the root causes of performance degradation. Hence, guidance and approaches could be provided to address these issues in a targeted manner and design better battery materials with higher energy density and improved safety. Then, a series of high-energy battery cathode technologies were developed, resulting in a considerable increase in battery performance. His high-voltage cathode materials for lithium and sodium ion batteries are able to achieve stable cycling with high energy densities and significantly reduce gas leakage during thermal runaway, greatly increasing the energy output, cycle life, and safety performance of cathode materials.