The Materials Science Institute of Madrid (ICMM-CSIC) is happy to invite you all to this talk in our Lectures in Materials Sciences seminars Series.
TITLE: From Insight to Design: Advanced Materials for Future Batteries.
AUTHOR: Montserrat Casas-Cabanas, Ikerbasque Professor and Scientific Director of the Electrochemical Energy Storage Area at CIC energiGUNE (Vitoria-Gasteiz).
WHEN: March, 11th - 12PM (Coffee at 11.30AM).
WHERE: Salón de Actos, ICMM-CSIC.
ABSTRACT: Understanding battery materials requires crystal-chemical intuition, careful structural analysis, and the right methodological tools to connect subtle structural features with real electrochemical behaviour.
In this talk, I will share how we bring together diffraction based characterisation and complementary techniques to gain a clearer picture of what is happening inside battery materials. I will present practical approaches using FAULTS to capture disorder, defects and stacking phenomena that are often decisive in real materials, and FullProfApp to enable high-quality refinements of large datasets such as in operando measurements. I will also discuss how blend strategies help us navigate complex phase coexistence and extract meaningful information from multiphase systems. I will also present a methodology for analysing blends, enabling a clear interpretation of the electrochemical signatures of mixed systems.
Through selected case studies I will illustrate how integrating these perspectives leads to a more complete understanding of structure–property relationships for the rational design of next-generation batteries.
BIO: Montserrat Casas-Cabanas is an Ikerbasque Professor and Scientific Director of the Electrochemical Energy Storage Area at CIC energiGUNE. Her research focuses on the crystal chemistry of electrode and electrolyte materials for next-generation Li-ion, Na-ion and solid-state batteries, combining operando X-ray diffraction, electrochemistry and materials synthesis to establish structure–property relationships.
She pioneered operando diffraction studies of structural evolution during battery cycling and developed the widely used FAULTS software. She leads a multidisciplinary team and has coordinated national, European and industrial projects. Her scientific contributions include publications, patents, book chapters and research software and has been recognised with several national research awards.
