The Electrochemical Society Interface

To capture how AI technology impacts the battery field, in this issue, we organized a series of feature articles contributed by experts who have applied AI technology to diverse aspects of batteries.

This article presents a high-level overview of the various technological advances that were performed to enable the commercialization of the Toyota MIRAI fuel cell vehicle. The article describes the innovations made in flow-field structure, catalyst layer structure and composition, various stack components, the hydrogen storage tank, and in streamlining the humidification process. Finally, the article highlights the importance of leveraging mass manufactured parts from prior generations/platforms to the maximum extent possible to achieve the requisite cost reductions and concludes with some thoughts on the future of fuel cell vehicles, and the necessity for a concerted effort to develop a hydrogen fueling infrastructure.

Proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysis was originally developed in the 1950s and 1960s by General Electric for space applications to generate oxygen for astronaut life support. Since then, several companies have transitioned the same basic technology to products for hydrogen generation at various scales. Today, PEM water electrolysis has developed into a mature technology for green hydrogen production when integrated with renewable energy. Its advantages include high efficiency, high operating density, fast dynamic response, and the ability to operate at high and differential pressures. However, cost and durability limit the large-scale implementation of PEM electrolyzers. Major components, including catalysts, membranes, and porous transport layers, hold promise for significantly reducing the cost of PEM electrolyzers. Collaborative accelerated stress tests across different labs are highly desirable to study the degradation of PEM electrolyzers and to further improve their durability.

Safety response of Li ion batteries is increasingly recognized as a critical performance requirement for commercial adoption of this chemistry, especially in large scale vehicular applications. The development of increasingly safe battery systems requires continued improvements in cell thermal stability as well as new pack and vehicle designs with rigorous and redundant safety controls. There are many advanced materials being developed and characterized in industry, universities, and national laboratories for Li ion batteries. These materials are often developed primarily for improved performance such as energy density, specific energy, power capability, low temperature response, cycle lifetime, and cost. Safety is often a property determined after the development phase. Safety and thermal stability should become a prime consideration in the initial development and material selection process. There is certainly no need for a “safe” battery that does not perform but also there is no need for a high performance battery that is unsafe.

"Advanced batteries such as lithium-ion batteries (LIB) based on graphitic carbon or silicon as the anode, as well as lithium-metal batteries (LMB), are complicated systems consisting of multiple components operating at extreme potentials. While all these components must work with each other in a highly synchronized manner, the electrolyte is undoubtedly a key element exposed to the most severe electrochemical constraints, because it must interface with every other component therein. In the history of battery development, the electrolyte was often the last piece of the puzzle to be figured out, as evidenced by the discoveries of thionyl chloride in primary LMBs, ethylene carbonate in graphite-based LIBs, and fluoroethylene carbonate in silicon-based LIBs. More often than not, discovery of the right electrolyte holds back the successful deployment of a new battery chemistry. In this article, we demonstrate a preliminary effort to design, discover, and generate new electrolyte materials from the vast molecular universe in a systematic and exhaustive manner, which fundamentally differs from the conventional human-based design and discovery of new materials. Given the astronomical size of the molecular universe, such an approach would have been unthinkable just a few years ago without today’s state-of-the-art AI/ML techniques.

In situ neutron and X-ray μCT offer non-destructive tools for investigating the physical and chemical mechanisms of battery degradation in LIBs and SSBs. By leveraging the complementary strengths of neutrons and X-rays, simultaneous neutron and X-ray tomography allows material-specific identification. This potential is highlighted in two case studies: imaging graphite electrode degradation in fast-charged LIBs and probing electro-chemo-mechanical instabilities at solid-state interfaces in anode-free SSBs. Neutron μCT, with its sensitivity to Li, is particularly effective for visualizing 3D Li morphologies and spatial heterogeneities, shedding light on their role in battery degradation.

Although liquid crystal displays (LCDs) have been available for over half a century, they were always taken as niche market products because of their rather poor performance: small viewing angles, long response time, and lack of large-area panels. The situation has changed dramatically since the availability of the active matrix (AM) LCDs, specially the amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin film transistor (TFT) driven LCDs. The displays manufactured on TFT LCDs will be major driving force for advancement of the TFT technology in the near future. New key impact areas of TFTs will be flexible electronics, integrated circuits, sensors, detectors, light emitting diodes, etc. Industry R&D activities have been aiming at improving the cost, yield, and throughput of large-area panels. Academic research in many universities has helped in the understanding of material properties responsible for the TFT performance as well as the underlying chemistry and physics of the fabrication processes.

3000°C. That’s not just hot … it’s EXTREMELY hot. It is above the melting or decomposition temperatures for most of the materials known to man. But in the world of extreme environment engineering, it is just a baseline.

Being electrochemists, we often think we know everything about chemistry, but dealing with a pool brings challenges never addressed in P-Chem.

My fellow members of the ECS community, what an enormous honor and privilege it is to be writing to you for the first time as president of The Electrochemical Society. As president of ECS, my commitment is to collaborate with each of you, the officers, and our outstanding professional staff, to define and implement new visions and new initiatives to enable our members and future members to solve the global grand challenges before us today. Won’t you join me in this effort?

Summer 2025 Society News includes publications updates, editorial updates, staff news, division officers and contacts, and ECS Institutional Partners.

The summer 2025 ECS People News features remembrances of Barry Miller and Hans Jürgen Schäfer

Summer 2025 Section News features section leadership.