(3cx) Sustainable Energy Storage Technologies: Green Synthesis Materials

Sustainability is gaining momentum as a new way of life in 21^st century. The complexities of energy-climate nexus and its perils on our planet is forcing governments and businesses to seek alternatives to current carbon-based energy economy. Sustainability is thus becoming a sound investment and an alternative paradigm. However, large-scale applications are still rare. One possible solution is to generate electricity from renewable resources such as wind, solar, tidal. However, most of these energy harvesting methods are intermittent and in order to arrive at a reasonable grid parity at large-scale novel and lower cost energy storage technologies are desperately needed. Limitations of current storage devices and their lack of integration with modern grid technologies is a major motivation to discover new methods to store electricity. Here, I will present my novel work to address the current underlying challenges in achieving commercially viable energy storage technologies and devices. Specifically, my focus is on super capacitors and lithium ion batteries. In the first example I will discuss the significant enhancement in the capacitance and service life of a supercapacitor by highlighting the role of graphene and graphene composites, additionally minimizing the leakage current issue in supercapacitor by employing dielectric effect of novel materials. The second example is related to improvement in lithium ion battery’s overall performance in terms of safety, capacitance and its working by incorporating the hierarchy porous carbon derived from petrochemical source with 1D nanostructure to address the commercializing shortcomings of this product. In terms, of SEI layer formation and limitations in lithium ion lithiation and dilithation and unknown kinetics rates are addressed by conceptualizing the smart materials e.g. Si-graphene core-shell, graphene oxide-conducting polymers nanostructures of Lithium ion battery. I also designed the portable, flexible printable battery by conceiving the novel screen printing technique and enhanced the overall discharge capacity of device by 30% and enhancing the overall discharge capacity of device by novel electrolytes combination to render high oxidization and voltage decomposition potential to improve the life and performance of device for novel robust storage technologies for consumer electronics.

Teaching Interests:

Apart from the freedom of research that a faculty position provides, the privilege that it creates to share knowledge with young and zealous students is another major aspect that always keeps me enthusiastic about academic life. As a graduate student with a full-time research assistantship, I volunteered to be a teaching assistant owing to my enthusiasm to teach. I held office hours every week and was involved in grading and helping students outside the classroom.
1. Teaching Philosophy
As a teacher, I strongly believe to establish rapport with the students and learn from them while teaching them. I trust that this approach would be useful to improve the learning ability of the students and simultaneously my teaching skills. I strongly believe that if subject is learned with passion to accrue knowledge, good grades will follow. I wish to satiate my desire to teach with dedication to this principle and would be very satisfied as a teacher if I could inculcate similar ideas in students and teach them the need for self-motivated lifelong learning.
2. Implementation
Adhering to my teaching philosophy, I like to involve student participation and conduct frequent group discussions in the class (with individual accountability) on a regular basis. Implementing this strategy can help students feel respected and important, become more engaged and interested in the class, obtain an insight of their behavior in a diverse group, learn to work collaboratively and gain confidence to voice their opinion in a public setting, while the teacher could indirectly obtain the students’ feedback and their perspectives of the subject.
3. Course Work
My exposure to fundamentals and concepts in my major specialization areas of Circuit analysis, VLS Design, Analog and Digital Electronics will enable me to teach related courses such as MEMS, Introduction to Nanotechnology, Semiconductor characterization, Digital CMOS, System on Chip, Biomedical imaging, IC processing, Power electronics and Electrochemistry at the graduate level, and Electronics1&11, Semiconductor Devices, thermodynamics, heat transfer and fluid mechanics etc. at the undergraduate level. I plan to design course material such that it induces both practical and analytical problem solving abilities in the students.
4. Course Development
After gaining a few years of teaching and research experience, I aim to amalgamate the knowledge that I gain from my research work with teaching, and develop a new multidisciplinary course at the graduate level in the area of renewable power/energy systems that includes the fundamentals of energy storage and transport, design guidelines for energy-efficient heat transfer and storage at all length scales and applications in renewable power, practicability, manufacturability and economical considerations for technology integration into renewable power generation systems.