The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.
This award will support a twenty-four month research fellowship by Dr. Wesley A. Henderson to work with Dr. Stefano Passerini at the Italian Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment (ENEA) in Rome, Italy.
This project is based on the study and development of alternative electrolytes (molten salts and ionic plastic crystalline materials) for lithium/air batteries. The development of such materials could provide critical breakthroughs in battery technology for a wide array of applications (e.g., electrically powered automobiles, power generation equipment, and electronics.). The lithium/air batteries potentially have an order of magnitude higher specific energy than zinc/air batteries, which are used currently, but these suffer from problems such as corrosion of lithium metal with water. These problems have inhibited their commercial use with conventional, highly hydrophobic electrolytes such as poly(ethylene oxide)/lithium salts. The hybrophobic molten salts to be studied in this project represent a potential solution to this problem.
ENEA's Advanced Electrochemical Energy Division conducts projects on both lithium rechargeable batteries and polymer electrolyte fuel cells for electric vehicles.
