Abstract: Batteries are among the key technologies for decarbonization with increasingly expanded applications in electronics, transportation and power grids. The demand for lighter devices and safer, longer-duration storage continues to fuel the need for battery innovation. This need, in turn, requires designing new materials, understanding how they function and, ultimately, developing scalable processes to manufacture them. However, making battery materials with the required capacity, power, lifespan, and safety is nontrivial, often hindered by the practical engineering challenges encountered when optimizing the multiple intercorrelated steps/processes – namely, synthesis, processing, benchmarking, and upscaling. 

In this seminar, we will present a rational design approach for addressing the engineering challenges in synthesis/processing and, with specific examples, explain how multiscale-correlated characterization and modeling is applied to the process design and scale-up of the calcination of nickel-based cathode active materials. We conclude by discussing emerging opportunities in digitalization of process design to close the loop from battery materials discovery to manufacturing.