Ultra-Battery: From Research to Application

Dr Robert Kerr

Throughout high school I was always mostly interested in physics, chemistry, and science in general. Being a very visual person, I think the fascination came with how many of the concepts in the physical sciences are visualised and then reduced to the core principles. This led me to a science/engineering double degree at Monash, where by my final year I had narrowed my interests to research into energy, materials, and electrochemistry. After completing a PhD thesis on conducting polymer catalysts for fuel cells, I worked at a Danish fuel cell start-up company, Danish Power Systems, for 2 years before returning to Deakin in 2015 and continuing to follow my career of research into new energy materials and technologies. For me personally, doing research in such an innovative and hot-button area provides me with great satisfaction in knowing that our work is held in high regard by society as a whole. But more than this, my hope is that our incredible knowledge and expertise is translated into things like technologies, jobs, and industry solutions which benefit the wider community.

Mojtaba Eftekharnia

As a mechanical engineer, Mojtaba (Mo) has always been interested in energy-related research projects, particularly when it comes to applied research.
When he moved to Australia, he joined Deakin University as a research assistant to study the behaviour of Silicon, which is a promising high energy density anode material for lithium-ion batteries, in ionic liquid electrolytes. Energy materials research was a completely new area to him and soon he developed a great interest in it because of its importance in harnessing renewable energy and reducing human footprint on environment.
He then started a research engineer role at Battery Technology Research & Innovation (BatTRI) Hub to employ his mechanical engineering skills and knowledge in Lithium metal battery prototyping where he contributed to the concept and design of a specialized robotic stacker for Li-metal and Na-metal battery stack creation.
Currently, while he is a Research Engineer at ARC Training Centre for Future Energy Storage Technologies (StorEnergy), he is conducting his PhD within the centre investigating and optimizing the manufacturing process of Lithium metal batteries in ionic liquid electrolytes with the aid of machine learning. Since various factors affect the performance of an energy storage system, a large number of experiments are required to find the best performing combination of materials and conditions. Mo is hoping to accelerate the process of Lithium metal battery prototyping by developing and training a machine learning model that predicts the performance of Lithium metal batteries under certain material combinations and/or operating conditions.