NEES Teleseminars

EFRC NEES Teleseminar - Long-Qing Chen
Thursday, May 26, 2016
4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.
1146 AV Williams
For More Information:
Elizabeth Lathrop
301 405 7801
lathrop5@umd.edu

Phase-field Method and Its Applications to Modeling Mesoscale Microstructure Evolution in Li-ion Batteries 

Long-Qing Chen

Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Materials Research Institute, Penn State University, University Park, PA 16802

For the past two decades, phase-field method has been established a powerful computational tool for modeling complex three-dimensional mesoscale microstructure evolution during a wide variety of materials processes.  In this presentation, a brief overview of the phase-field approach and its applications will be provided. Examples of applying phase-field method to modeling microstructural processes during Li-plating as well as Li-insertion into and extraction from electrodes in Li-ion batteries will be briefly discussed. In particular, a phase field model for modeling the morphological evolution during the intercalation/extraction of Li-ions into a host electrode will be described. It incorporates the effects of anisotropic diffusional mobility of Li-ions in the electrode host lattice, flux of Li-ions across the electrode/electrolyte interface, and coherency strains arising from the lattice parameter mismatch between the lithiated and unlithiated phases. Implementation of spectral methods to solving the systems of equations under non-periodic boundary conditions will be presented.  A nonlinear phase-field model, accounting for the Butler-Volmer electrochemical reaction kinetics, will also be discussed. The dendritic patterns are examined as a function of applied voltage and initial electrode surface morphology. A design map is proposed to tailor the electrode surface morphology and the applied voltage to control the morphology of dendritic patterns. The possibility of incorporating the effect of SEI on the Li-dendrite formation in a phase-field model will be discussed.

Long-Qing Chen is Donald W. Hamer Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, and Professor of Mathematics at Penn State.  He received his Ph.D. from MIT in Materials Science and Engineering in 1990 and joined the faculty at Penn State in 1992. He has published over 500 papers (with ~ 18,000 total citations and H-index of 67 according to the Web of Sciences and > 25,000 total citations and H-index of 76 according to the Google Scholar) in the area of computational microstructure evolution and multiscale modeling of structural metallic alloys, functional oxide thin films, and energy materials.  He is a Fellow of the Materials Research Society (MRS), American Physical Society (APS), American Ceramic Society (ACerS), and American Society for Metals (ASM).  He received the 2003 University Faculty Scholar Medal in Engineering and a Distinguished Professorship in 2012 at Penn State.  He is a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow and awarded the 2006 ASM Materials Research Silver Medal, the 2011 TMS EMPMD Distinguished Scientist Award, the 2014 MRS Materials Theory Award, and 2015 Lee Hsun Lecture Award by the Shenyang Institute for Metals of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.  He is the Editor-in-Chief for npj Computational Materials by the Nature Publishing Group.

This Event is For: Graduate • Faculty • Post-Docs