Old Chemistries in New Boxes: System Sympathetic Energy Storage

Traditional portable devices have driven the energy density demands on battery, and batteries have responded remarkably well given the many couplings they must balance. New applications, however, demand not only new form factors but perhaps a rebalance of those couplings. Whether cells for wearable devices or batteries for uninterruptible power supplies, a close examination of the application requirements with what the chemistry can do as well as that the chemistry _wants_ to do provides some insights that can lead to new packages for old chemistries that satisfies new applications with existing materials supplies chains. In this talk we will examine application needs for conformal electronics as well as grid scale energy storage, and a case will be made for teaching a very old chemistry some new tricks.

Dr. Dan Steingart is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University. He has an ScB in engineering from Brown University and MS and PhD degrees in materials science from the University of California at Berkeley. As a senior applications engineer at Sentilla, Steingart developed wireless sensor networks, including micropower management, sensor development, and network integration. Steingart is the co-founder of Wireless Industrial Technologies, a Berkeley company that uses wireless mesh networks to optimize electricity use and minimize emissions in large-scale, distributed primary metals production plants.