Radomsky Lab

Research in the Radomsky Lab

Discovery of novel materials for battery electrodes and electrolytes. 

Rechargeable batteries are a crucial aspect of building a sustainable energy landscape. Batteries are essential to many aspects of sustainability: they are used in personal electronics, electric vehicles, and even as large-scale storage for renewable energy collected by solar panels and wind turbines. Li-ion batteries are currently being used for all of these needs. However, many new battery technologies (beyond Li-ion) are predicted to have improved safety, capacities, and lifetimes. 

Research in the Radomsky lab focuses on discovering new materials for fluoride-ion batteries (FIBs), a new type of battery system that is predicted to have very high capacities and lifetimes. However, a working commercial FIB has not yet been made due to the lack of materials that are suitable to act as electrodes and electrolytes in FIBs. The aim of the research in the Radomsky lab is to discover new crystalline materials that have high F-ion conductivity (and thus will be efficient electrodes and electrolytes in FIBs). We use a combination of computational and experimental methods to explore new materials that have never before been made, predict their properties, synthesize them via solid-state synthesis, and characterize them via diffraction and microscopy.