Michael Toney News

Building community around electrochemistry and energy innovation

Jeff Zehnder — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 14:48:30 +0000

Building community around electrochemistry and energy innovation Jeff Zehnder Mon, 09/15/2025 - 08:48

Building on the momentum of the well-attended 2023 materials chemistry gathering, a new workshop brought together students, faculty and national lab staff from across the Front Range for a focused conversation on electrochemistry—with a strong emphasis on batteries, energy storage and the role of machine learning in accelerating innovation.

Professor Michael Toney, co-organizer for the 2025 Front Range Electrochemistry Workshop (FREW), explained that while the meeting broadly addressed electrochemical science, this year’s focus on batteries reflects their increasing relevance to everything from electric vehicles to renewable energy infrastructure.

“Electrochemistry is a very energy-efficient way of driving chemical reactions to produce useful products,” he said. “That includes emerging battery technologies, which are key to storing electricity generated by solar or wind when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.”

Among the invited speakers was Assistant Professor Kayla Sprenger, who spoke on her group's innovative approaches using simulations to model battery interfaces. The event aimed not only to highlight cutting-edge research—including the potential of AI to optimize battery materials and testing—but also to build community among graduate students and early-career researchers. As Toney noted, many students work in small lab groups and don’t always realize how many peers and potential collaborators are just a short drive away.

Co-organized with Eric Toberer, a physics professor at Colorado School of Mines, the workshop also included collaborative pitch sessions, where student teams proposed new research ideas for cash prizes. Pitch and poster session awardees included CEAS graduate students Loren Andrews, Rebecca Beswick, Peter Romero, Bryce Rives and Cindy Wong.

With around 100 attendees—mostly students—the event fostered both technical exchange and professional networking, creating space for new ideas, mentorship and cross-institution partnerships across the region.

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Discovery could lead to longer-lasting EV batteries, hasten energy transition

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 20:56:11 +0000

Discovery could lead to longer-lasting EV batteries, hasten energy transition Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/19/2024 - 14:56

Batteries lose capacity over time, which is why older cellphones run out of power more quickly. This common phenomenon, however, is not completely understood.

Now, an international team of researchers, led by an engineer at ��ñ��, has revealed the underlying mechanism behind such battery degradation. Their discovery could help scientists to develop better batteries, which would allow electric vehicles to run farther and last longer, while also advancing energy storage technologies that would accelerate the transition to clean energy.

The findings were published Sept. 12 in the journal Science.

“We are helping to advance lithium-ion batteries by figuring out the molecular level processes involved in their degradation,” said Michael Toney, the paper’s co-corresponding author and a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. “Having a better battery is very important in shifting our energy infrastructure away from fossil fuels to more renewable energy sources.”

Michael Toney

Engineers have been working for years on designing lithium-ion batteries—the most common type of rechargeable batteries—without cobalt. Cobalt is an expensive rare mineral, and its mining process has been linked to grave environmental and human rights concerns. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, which supplies more than half of the world’s cobalt, many miners are children.

So far, scientists have tried to use other elements such as nickel and magnesium to replace cobalt in lithium-ion batteries. But these batteries have even higher rates of self-discharge, which is when the battery’s internal chemical reactions reduce stored energy and degrade its capacity over time. Because of self-discharge, most EV batteries have a lifespan of seven to 10 years before they need to be replaced.

Toney, who is also a fellow of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, and his team set out to investigate the cause of self-discharge. In a typical lithium-ion battery, lithium ions, which carry charges, move from one side of the battery, called the anode, to the other side, called the cathode, through a medium called an electrolyte. During this process, the flow of these charged ions forms an electric current that powers electronic devices. Charging the battery reverses the flow of the charged ions and returns them to the anode.

Previously, scientists thought batteries self-discharge because not all lithium ions return to the anode when charging, reducing the number of charged ions available to form the current and provide power.

Using the Advanced Photon Source, a powerful X-ray machine, at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, the research team discovered that hydrogen molecules from the battery’s electrolyte would move to the cathode and take the spots that lithium ions normally bind to. As a result, lithium ions have fewer places to bind to on the cathode, weakening the electric current and decreasing the battery’s capacity.

“We discovered that the more lithium you pull out of the cathode during charging, the more hydrogen atoms accumulate on the surface,” said Gang Wan, the study’s first author at Stanford University.” This process induces self-discharge and causes mechanical stress that can cause cracks in the cathode and accelerate degradation.”

Transportation is the single largest source of greenhouse gases generated in the U.S, accounting for 28% of the country’s emissions in 2021. In an effort to reduce emissions, many automakers have committed to moving away from developing gasoline cars to produce more EVs instead. But EV manufacturers face a host of challenges, including limited driving range, higher production costs and shorter battery lifespan than conventional vehicles. In the U.S. market, a typical all-electric car can run about 250 miles in a single charge, about 60% that of a gasoline car. The new study has the potential to address all of these issues, Toney said.

“All consumers want cars with a large driving range. Some of these low cobalt-containing batteries can potentially provide a higher driving range, but we also need to make sure they don’t fall apart in a short period of time,” he said, noting that reducing cobalt can also reduce costs and address human rights and energy justice concerns.

With a better understanding of the self-discharge mechanism, engineers can explore a few ways to prevent the process, such as coating the cathode with a special material to block hydrogen molecules or using a different electrolyte.

“Now that we understand what is causing batteries to degrade, we can inform the battery chemistry community on what needs to be improved when designing in batteries,” Toney said.

Additional co-authors of the study included Oleg Borodin, Travis Pollard and Marshall Schroeder at DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory, Chia-Chin Chen at National Taiwan University, Zihua Zhu and Yingge Du at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Ye Zhang at the University of Houston.

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New materials research at ��ñ�� will help develop high-efficiency solar cells

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 20:13:53 +0000

New materials research at ��ñ�� will help develop high-efficiency solar cells Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/19/2023 - 14:13

Researchers in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the Materials Science and Engineering Program have published new findings in Joule that could lead to the development of better hybrid lead halide perovskites – a class of materials proposed for use as low-cost, high-efficiency solar cells. We asked first author and materials engineering research associate Nicholas Weadock about the work, his time at ��ñ�� and more.

Question: How would you describe the work and results of this paper?
A: “This work develops a better understanding of hybrid lead halide perovskites, a class of materials proposed for use as low-cost, high-efficiency solar cells. These materials are made up of lead, halide anions like chlorine, bromine, and iodine, and small organic cations like methylammonium.

Up to this point, scientists and engineers have been asking ‘how do we make lead halide perovskites’ or ‘why do they work so well for solar cells’ – but the harder question of why they behave the way they do is still unanswered. To solve that question, we investigated the structure-function relationship, which applies scientific concepts to determine the useful properties of a material for solar cells based on the arrangement of atoms. We used a combination of experimental and computational techniques to observe the atomic arrangement of these materials – the first step in determining the structure-function relationship. What we find is that these materials contain two-dimensional ‘pancakes’ which are 10-25 atoms across and only three atoms thick. This is a surprising result as previous studies suggested only three-dimensional arrangements of atoms. The pancakes are likely responsible for the remarkable properties of the lead halide perovskites, giving them their function as solar cell materials.”

Q: What are the applications in the real world from this research? Why do we want to investigate these questions?
A: "The two-dimensional, pancake-like atomic arrangements that we found can help us better understand and address some of the unanswered questions and problems associated with these materials. When sunlight hits solar cells made from lead halide perovskites electric current is created. The current must flow out of the solar cell to generate useful power on the grid. In lead halide perovskites the useful current flows farther than in other solar cell materials, but scientists do not understand why. We believe that positively charged methylammonium molecules within the pancakes align in such a way as to create small electric fields which improve current flow. Other solar cell materials, like the silicon found now in most solar cells, do not have this property.

Additionally, an unsolved problem in lead halide perovskites solar cells is the migration of charged atoms (ions) during solar cell operation. This migration causes the material to break down after extended use, which might limit their usefulness. The 2D atomic correlations we found have been demonstrated to slow ion migration in other computational studies. If they could be fixed in place, we could slow ion migration and increase the lifetime of these solar cells."

Q: Was there a particular aspect of this work that was hard to complete?
A: “We’ve been working on this since 2020, and were very lucky that our diffuse scattering experiments were relatively “simple” to perform in that they could be run remotely during the COVID shutdowns. Similarly, our collaborators at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign already had molecular dynamics simulations that we, together with TY Sterling and Dmitry Reznik in physics could use to directly calculate diffuse scattering for comparison. What was difficult was analyzing the results to comprehend the atomic structure on the local level and determine whether this structure is static (fixed in place) or dynamic (moving around). To answer this question we needed to perform additional neutron inelastic spectroscopy experiments. It turns out that these two-dimensional “pancakes” have a dynamic component, but there are also static distortions!

Somewhat related to this, I secured, together with professors Mike Toney and Ryan Hayward, $700,000 funding for a new X-ray instrument that was installed recently.

Q: What was it like working with Professor Mike Toney on this project? How have you liked working at ��ñ��?
A: “I have really enjoyed my time at ��ñ�� so far! The university research setting is very exciting, and I have made several research connections and collaborations with other groups local institutions.

Working with professor Toney here has been a big change from our time together in California, as the group at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory was primarily postdoctoral associates and senior graduate students. At ��ñ��, the group is much larger and younger. I’ve really been impressed with the progress that the graduate students have made so far, both in their experimental and academic prowess, and overall understanding of the concepts underlying their research projects.”

This work was supported in part by the Center for Hybrid Organic Inorganic Semiconductors for Energy (CHOISE), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, an office of science within the U.S. Department of Energy; and by the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, under Contract NO. DE-SC0006939. A portion of this work (S(Q) calculations) used the Summit supercomputer, which is supported by the National Science Foundation (awards ACI-1532235 and ACI-1532236), the ��ñ��, and Colorado State University. The Summit supercomputer is a joint effort of the ��ñ�� and Colorado State University. Other ��ñ�� authors include Tyler C. Sterling, Dmitry Reznik, and Michael F. Toney.

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McGehee, Toney and Yin recognized as highly cited researchers

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 16:53:03 +0000

McGehee, Toney and Yin recognized as highly cited researchers Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/22/2021 - 09:53

Jonathan Raab

McGehee, Toney and Yin

Three Materials Science and Engineering faculty members were recognized by Clarivate as highly cited researchers this year. Clarivate recognizes "the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year" via their Web of Science platform.

The three faculty recognized were Professor Michael McGehee, Professor Michael Toney and Assistant Professor Xiaobo Yin.

Professor Michael McGehee of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory specializes in perovskite solar cells and dynamic windows with adustable tinting for sustainable energy production and efficiency.

Professor Michael Toney of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering focuses on studying the underlying physics and chemistry of materials for sustainable energy, as well as the social justice implications of clean energy.

Assistant Professor Xiaobo Yin of the Paul M. Rady Mechanical Engineering Department specializes in nanomaterials and metamaterials, synthetic materials with novel properties and mechanic and electronic properties not found in nature.

These researchers were among 17 faculty from ��ñ�� recognized this year.

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Michael Toney News

Building community around electrochemistry and energy innovation

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Discovery could lead to longer-lasting EV batteries, hasten energy transition

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New materials research at ��ñ���� will help develop high-efficiency solar cells

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McGehee, Toney and Yin recognized as highly cited researchers

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New materials research at ��ñ�� will help develop high-efficiency solar cells