Sanzeeda Baig Shuchi
TomKat Graduate Fellow for Translational Research
Research Labs: Stacey Bent and Yi Cui
Year Awarded: 2024
Sanzeeda Baig Shuchi envisions a world where energy crisis is a thing of the past. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Chemical Engineering (ChemE) at Stanford University. Her current energy research focuses on improving and understanding lithium battery stability using surface science and interface engineering supervised by Prof. Stacey F. Bent and Prof. Yi Cui. She is a TomKat Center Graduate Fellow for Translational Research and a Link Foundation Energy Fellow. She completed her MS in ChemE from Stanford. She also received the Summer First Fellowship and ChemE departmental fellowship. Before Stanford, she completed her BS in the same field from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), where she graduated with the highest CGPA in the Faculty of Engineering and is a prime minister gold medal candidate. Other than research, she serves as the lab safety officer in Bent group and enjoys performing departmental student mentoring and student representative activities. She has also previously served as a co-organizer of Engineering Students for DEI (ES4DEI) at Stanford and the vice-president of Environment Watch: BUET. Outside the lab, she enjoys houseplants, interior decoration, painting, board games, and exploring local beaches and restaurants.
Scalable surface modification of polymeric separator toward commercial lithium-sulfur batteries
Developing sustainable, low-cost, environmentally friendly battery solutions is compulsory to create a clean-energy economy. Lithium-sulfur chemistry is particularly interesting owing to the high theoretical energy density (~2500 Wh/kg), abundance, low cost, and environmental friendliness of sulfur-cathodes. This technology is also considered the most commercially mature “beyond Li-ion” battery technology. Notably, among different cathode chemistries demonstrated to date, sulfur-cathodes present one of the lowest costs per unit capacity in Ah. However, polysulfide shuttling is a key hurdle to overcome before successful commercialization. Polysulfide shuttling refers to the irreversible capacity loss from sulfur-cathode due to the formation of intermediate soluble lithium-polysulfide species. Lithium polysulfide attacks the lithium anode and gets reduced into an insulating lithium-sulfide layer, which repeatedly shuttles between the anode and cathode during cycling, causing capacity decay.
Leveraging atomically precise techniques, we aim to tackle the polysulfide challenge by applying a nanoscale coating onto the polymeric separator with polysulfide trapping capabilities. The method, atomic layer deposition (ALD), is sustainable as it ensures low material usage with conformal coatings at the nanoscale. Metal oxide particles are known to enhance anionic polysulfide adsorption because of their surface acidity, and using these oxides is one of the well-established approaches to PS mitigation. However, a thick particle interlayer can lead to pore closure of the separator, resulting in less capacity utilization during cycling, for which thin film coatings can be beneficial.
The ultimate goal of our project is to design high-energy density commercial lithium-sulfur batteries to address the evergrowing energy demand. Potentially, the understanding and application of this project can be extended to other sulfur-based battery systems, such as silicon anode-sulfur, lithium alloy-sulfur, and sodium-sulfur batteries.