PhD student - Multifunctional carbon fibres for structural batteries

Join our research team focused on structural battery composite materials. As a PhD student, you will collaborate with experts in materials science, physics, chemistry and computational mechanics. Your responsibility will be to contribute to the manufacture of tailor-made carbon fibres for structural battery negative electrodes and to characterise their microstructure and resulting electro-chemo-thermo-mechanical properties. You will also make structural battery composites and characterise their multifunctional performance using test methods that we develop at Chalmers.

Project description
Your project will be part of the activities on Structural battery composites at Chalmers. Chalmers has pioneered this research for more than one decade Currently, the Chalmers' team comprise approximately 15 people. The research is performed in an interdisciplinary team across Chalmers and at our partners at Deakin University in Australia. The project is funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research. The PhD position is for five years, with research training spanning over four years, and an additional year involves teaching.

Batteries in today's electric cars and imminent electric aircraft constitute a large part of the vehicles' weight, without fulfilling any load-bearing function. A structural battery, on the other hand, is one that works as both a power source and as part of the structure - for example, in a car body, aircraft interior or laptop casing. This is termed 'massless' energy storage, because in essence the battery's weight vanishes when it becomes part of the load-bearing structure. Calculations show that this type of multifunctional battery could greatly reduce the weight of an electric vehicle.

For structural batteries to be useful they must perform their electrical energy storage and supply functions under severe mechanical loads, and vice versa their mechanical integrity must be maintained for all states of charge. For this purpose, we use carbon fibres as structural negative electrodes and as reinforcement and electron collectors in the positive electrode. Albeit providing high electrochemical capacity, all commercial carbon fibres have been prepared for a given mechanical performance. Here, we set out to develop carbon fibres with tailor-made multifunctional properties, targeting combined high modulus, strength and electrochemical capacity. The tailor-made carbon fibres will be demonstrated in the next generation structural batteries for unprecedented multifunctional performance.

The carbon fibres will be made at Deakin University using the Carbon Nexus plant. You will spend up to six months secondment at Deakin to participate in the preparation and processing of carbon fibres and their precursors. The most promising fibre types will be brought to Chalmers, their carbonaceous microstructure analysed and electrochemical and thermo-mechanical properties characterised. Finally, the top-performing fibre type will be demonstrated in a fibre-based structural battery composite and its electro-chemical performance under simultaneous tensile loading will be assessed. Material testing and characterisation will be performed in our Composites Laboratory at the Department as well as at Chalmers Material Analysis Lab (CMAL).

The PhD student position will be placed at the Division of Material and Computational Mechanics (Department Industrial and Materials Science). The work will be carried out in close collaboration with researchers at the Division of Materials and Manufacture and the Department of Physics at Chalmers as well as colleagues at the Institute for Frontier Materials at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia (https://www.deakin.edu.au/ifm).

For more information you find a recent video on massless energy storage - a structural battery with record performance on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB81lkPGGlE.

Major responsibilities
Your major responsibility as a PhD student is to pursue your own doctoral studies related to the project. The major goal of the project is to tailor-make multifunctional carbon fibres for structural electrodes and relate their performance to the carbonaceous microstructures, i.e. crystallite size and orientation, and chemical composition. You are expected to develop your own scientific concepts and communicate the results of your research verbally and in writing. Your research activities will contribute to enhanced knowledge in the scientific field, in particular by presenting your results in scientific journals and at international conferences.

In addition to the research project, you will also take courses on the advanced level within the Graduate school in Materials Science. The position also includes teaching courses within Chalmers' undergraduate level, or performing other duties at the department, corresponding to up to 20 percent of working hours.

Contract terms
Full-time temporary employment. The position is limited to a maximum of 5 years.

We offer
Chalmers offers a cultivating and inspiring working environment in the coastal city of Gothenburg. 
Read more about working at Chalmers and our benefits for employees.

Chalmers aims to actively improve our gender balance. We work broadly with equality projects, for example the GENIE Initiative on gender equality for excellence. Equality and diversity are substantial foundations in all activities at Chalmers.

Application procedure
For more information and to apply, please go to: https://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/Working-at-Chalmers/Vacancies/Pages/default.aspx?rmpage=job&rmjob=10528

Application deadline: 5 June, 2022