About the speaker

Patrice Simon is Distinguished Professor of Material Science at the Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier. He is former director of the Alistore European Research Institute (www.alistore.eu) focused on Li-ion battery research and Deputy Director of the French network on Electrochemical Energy Storage (RS2E, www.energie-rs2e.com). His research activities focus on the fundamental understanding of electrochemical processes occurring at the material / electrolyte interfaces in electrodes for electrochemical energy storage devices (batteries and electrochemical capacitors). He published about 250 papers (h-index 81, 56,000 citations). He received several awards for his scientific contribution including Grants from the European Research Council (2012, 2020), Conway Prize in Electrochemistry from ISE (2018), the Silver Medal from the CNRS (2015), International RussNanoprize (2015). He is Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry (2017). Patrice Simon is member of the French Academy of Sciences (2019), member of the European Academy of Sciences (2019), and Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France (2017).

About the webinar

Growing demand for fast charging electrochemical energy storage devices with long cycle lifetimes for portable electronics has led to a desire for alternatives to current battery systems, which store energy via slow, diffusion-limited faradaic reactions. The closest devices that fit these demands are electrochemical capacitors (ECs), also called supercapacitors, which can be fully charged within minutes, with almost unlimited cyclability. However, the main challenge ECs are facing is the improvement of their energy density and this is why high rate redox materials are also currently intensively investigated.

This presentation will give an overview of the research work achieved on capacitive (porous carbon) and high-rate redox (pseudocapacitive) materials, and show the challenges/limitations associated with the development of these materials. Starting with porous carbons [1,2], we will present the state-of-the art of the fundamental of ion adsorption mechanism in porous carbons and its practical applications. Moving from double layer to high rate redox materials, we will show how the control of the electrodes structure can help in preparing high capacitance electrodes using 2-Dimensional MXene materials in both aqueous and non-aqueous electrolytes [3-5].

This set of results helped in developing our basic understanding of the ion fluxes at the electrolyte / material interface as well as ion interactions in confined structures. From a practical point of view, they offer new opportunities for designing high energy density supercapacitors and high power batteries.