Engagements

ARPA-E

The Origins of Breakthrough Battery Technology

Carlo Segre, while Duchossois Leadership Professor of Physics at Illinois Institute of Technology, received a $3.4 million award in 2013 from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E) to develop a breakthrough battery technology that may more than double the current range of electric vehicles (EV), increase safety, reduce costs and simplify recharging.

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The future founders of Influit Energy, Segre and his collaborators John Katsoudas, also of IIT, and Elena Timofeeva were working to develop a prototype for a rechargeable ​“nanoelectrofuel” flow battery with the objective of extending the range of EVs to at least 500 miles and provide a straightforward and rapid method of refueling. Current EV ranges are 100-200 miles, with recharging taking up to eight hours.

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Flow batteries, which store chemical energy in external tanks instead of within the battery container, are generally low in energy density and therefore not used for transportation applications.  The IIT-Argonne nanoelectrofuel flow battery concept used a high-energy density ​“liquid” with battery-active nanoparticles to dramatically increase energy density while ensuring stability and low-resistance flow within the battery.

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Segre’s expertise was in the structure and properties of materials using synchrotron radiation techniques. He had a wide variety of ongoing research projects, including fuel-cell catalysts and battery materials. Segre was the deputy director of the Materials Research Collaborative Access Team (MR-CAT) beamline at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), located at Argonne; and director of the Center for Synchrotron Radiation Research and Instrumentation (CSRRI) at IIT.

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Katsoudas and Timofeeva began their work on the IIT-Argonne nanoelectrofuel flow battery at Argonne, leveraging Timofeeva’s expertise in nanofluids engineering and electrochemistry. Katsoudas is an expert in instrumentation design, automation of experiments and materials characterization.