Challenges and Opportunities in the Development of Advanced Battery Materials

Renewable energies are a reality, and they demand sustainable, robust, and efficient energy storage. Batteries appear as the best practical solution and world-wide efforts are oriented to the development of continuously improved technologies. However, outstanding challenges exist to ensure that these out-of-equilibrium electrochemical devices operate safely for long times, while meeting the highest energy and power density targets, In this talk, we will discuss battery materials behavior describing the specific chemistry effects, but also interfacial structure and dynamics, cross-talk events, multiscale phenomena, and composite structures. Finally, we will elaborate on the possibility of achieving control over the sources of the apparently inevitable degradation behavior.