Research & Innovation

Highlights

Increasing the lifetime and decreasing the cost of lithium-ion batteries

For close to 40 years, Dr. Jeff Dahn has been at the forefront of research and innovation in battery technology. Now, collaborating with Tesla as an industrial research chair, his lab is helping improve lithium-ion cells for electric vehicles and energy storage.

Learn more about Dr. Dahn's work

From the beginning, Dahn’s research focused on the science of batteries and energy storage. In the 1980s, researchers were beginning to explore using lithium compounds as the core electrode materials in lithium batteries. Today, lithium-ion batteries power rechargeable devices of all sorts, from cell phones and laptops to tools and electric vehicles.

Dr. Dahn and his team made perhaps their most significant contribution to lithium-ion batteries at Dalhousie University. Post-doc Zhonghua Lu, graduate student Dean MacNeil and Dr. Dahn developed certain grades of lithium nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) oxide compounds, ones that when used as the positive electrode, increase the safety and stability of the batteries at larger sizes. Close to 20 years later, these grades of NMCs are widely used in power tool and electric car batteries around the world — and represent several of the 65 or so inventions that his team has patented.

When it came time for Tesla to sign it’s first ever university research partnership, it went north – and east – to the Dahn Lab. In 2016, the company signed a five-year exclusive collaboration with his lab, focused on increasing the lifetime, decreasing the cost and improving the energy density of lithium-ion batteries.

Yesterday (September 22, 2020), Tesla held the 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders and Battery Day. Updates from the electric vehicle manufacturer and clean energy company include a “tabless” battery that could not only improve an electric vehicle car’s range and power, but reduce Telsa’s cost per kilowatt-hour. These new batteries will be produced in-house, which will dramatically reduce costs, make the price of the car similar to that of a gas-powered car, and make production more efficient.

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Fueling our future

Arguably one of the greatest issues facing our planet and species is finding sustainable and storable sources of renewable energy. It’s the only way we can limit the impacts of global climate change and power a growing population. Mita Dasog, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, researches and develops cheaper, safer and more efficient materials and technologies for harvesting and storing solar energy.

Feeding the planet

By 2050, the population is expected to reach 9.7 billion people. That’s 2.3 billion more people to feed. Innovative approaches like a partnership between Dal’s Faculty of Agriculture and Ethiopia are helping to address the issue now. As part of the Agricultural Transformation through Stronger Vocational Education project, Dal experts, like fourth-year bioveterinary science student Maddie Empey, are helping to change agriculture education in Ethiopia. With approximately 80-85 per cent of the population employed in the sector, enhancing the current agriculture education model will improve production, strengthen communities and support a stronger economy that benefits everyone.

Finding cures

When it comes to DNA, surprisingly zebrafish and humans aren’t all that different. Ultimately the likeness means there’s huge potential in zebrafish models to identify the genes that underlie human diseases. And it’s at Dal’s Zebrafish Core Facility that researchers like Jason Berman in the Faculty of Medicine evaluate genetic modifications and therapeutic responses to transplanted human cells in zebrafish in real time. The research is providing insights into diseases like breast cancer, cardiac development, neurological disease, memory and other phenomena.

Dalhousie University