Research

We are interested in a wide range of physical and chemical processes of materials at nanometer or atomic scale. Our primary efforts are in the study of materials transformation under working environment key to the fabrication of inexpensive and efficient energy devices.

By the development and applications of in situ liquid or gas environmental transmission electron microscopy (TEM), we study nucleation, growth, mass transport and ion exchange of materials under conditions relevant to realistic applications, i.e, at an applied electric bias, in reduction or oxidation environment, etc. These efforts open the opportunities to address fundamental materials issues in energy conversion and energy storage applications that are inaccessible by many other approaches.

Our research efforts consist of the following components: 

   1). Mechanistic study of nanoparticle growth and transformation in liquids

   2). Structural dynamics of nanoparticle catalysis

   3). Mass transport and interfaces in electrochemical processes

Principal Investigator

The group

From left to right:

Liku Cui

Huolin Xin

Kaiyang Niu

Haimei Zheng

Hong-Gang Liao

Minghua Sun

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA

The understanding of the materials interaction with environments provides us guidance for designing functional materials for specific applications. We use light-matter interaction and non-equilibrium growth to achieve new functional materials that overcome the limits of materials in energy applications.

10/10/2011 @ LBL

Group hike 10/9/2011