Guest Blogger: Mike Lerner

I attended the 31st International Battery Seminars in March. One the one hand, I presented a short review of current academic research on graphene in energy storage applications. My conclusions were that “gen-2” graphenes, with tailored functional edges and basal surfaces, present a possible route towards dense, electrically and thermally conductive composite hierarchical structures for battery or supercapacitor electrodes. And also that this is no secret, there is a lot of research activity ongoing all over the globe.

On the other hand, I manned an OSU exhibitor booth extolling the virtues of our soon-to-be-offered online course called “Chemistry and Materials of Batteries and Supercapacitors”.  There was an encouraging level of interest from large and small companies, governmental agencies, and other academics. I hope we’ll get a mix of students from these sources; among other advantages it will make for interesting class discussions.

Finally, the conference itself was fantastic. One could feel, almost palpably, the pull from industry for better batteries to meet the demands of the electric vehicle and smart grid markets. At the same time, we heard from many contributors that the existing technology and its logical extensions will not likely get us there — that major and fundamental advances in materials and chemistry are needed. What does this all mean? For one thing, it’s a very good time to be a battery chemist!