University of Waterloo chemist Linda Nazar has been named the recipient of the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, awarded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for her work on safer and more sustainable batteries.
The award comes with $1 million in funding over five years. Nazar is a distinguished University Professor in the university's Department of Chemistry and has studied battery materials for more than three decades.
In a news release, NSERC said Nazar's "world-leading discoveries have transformed the science of electrochemical energy storage, laying the foundation for safer, more efficient batteries that are helping accelerate the global shift to clean transportation and renewable energy."
"I'm deeply honoured to win this award. And I'm also quite honestly humbled to join the remarkable scientists and engineers who have received this distinction before me," Nazar told CBC News.
Nazar has led research on lithium-sulfur batteries and, more recently, solid-state batteries. She said solid-state batteries offer "much better safety" than liquid-state batteries, which are the most common type in everyday life.
Liquid-state batteries, also called lithium-ion batteries, power devices such as cell phones, laptops and power tools. Nazar said they are reaching the pinnacle of their success and that she is working with her team on a new generation to take over.
Solid-state batteries use solid electrolytes rather than liquid ones. Nazar said liquid electrolytes are flammable and can burst into flames, and that solid-state versions operate across a wider temperature range. She said they can hold more energy because cells can be packed more effectively through what she called bipolar stacking.
"They can be used, for example, in drones which are flying at higher elevations where it's really cold. They can be used in the Arctic more efficiently. They can be used in the military because they're safer," Nazar said.
Nazar said her team contributed to the early understanding of lithium-iron phosphate battery materials, which she said are now used heavily in the automobile industry. Over her career she has also worked on magnesium, sodium-ion and lithium-ion batteries.
She is now working on aqueous batteries, which use water as an electrolyte, on a project with the U.S. Department of Energy through a hub based at Stanford. Nazar said she became interested in batteries as a graduate student at the University of Toronto.
Comments (0)
Please log in to comment.
No comments yet.