ABSTRACT: 

A drastic switch to renewable energy conversion and storage technologies is required to meet the decarbonization goals of the Paris agreement. There remain challenges related to the energy density, conversion efficiency, cost, integration, and scaleup of emerging technologies. Materials are at the forefront of these challenges and provide a promising route to enable these technologies allowing beyond incremental progress on these metrics. This talk will discuss how a combination of theory, computation, and data-driven methods can accelerate the design of functional materials and interfaces for two applications: solid-state lithium metal batteries and perovskite solar cells. I will describe the manipulation of the coupling between mechanics and electrochemistry to mitigate the challenges associated with high energy density solid-state batteries. In solar cells, I will show how first-principles simulations uncover the microscopic origins of the variation in power conversion efficiency of metal halide perovskite semiconductors under different material synthesis conditions.

BIOSKETCH:

Dr. Zeeshan Ahmad is a postdoctoral scholar at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago. His research aims to advance renewable energy and electrify road transportation through fundamental understanding and design of materials for batteries and solar photovoltaics. He received his B. Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in 2015, winning the Institute Silver Medal and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2020. At Carnegie Mellon, he was awarded the Bushnell Fellowship in Engineering and the Phillips and Huang Family Fellowship in Energy.