Dr Wesley Dose | UNSW Research

Biography

Dr Wesley Dose completed his PhD in Chemistry in 2014 at the University of Newcastle (Australia). His doctoral thesis focused on investigations of manganese-based materials for application in lithium batteries. In 2016, Wesley moved to Argonne National Laboratory (Chicago, USA) for a postdoctoral position in Dr Christopher Johnson’s group working on understanding the operation and failure mechanisms of silicon-based negative electrodes for lithium-ion batteries. In 2018, Wesley joined the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) as a postdoctoral research associate in the groups’ of Prof. Dame Clare Grey and Prof. Michael De Volder. At Cambridge, his research studied the mechanisms of degradation of lithium-ion battery cells with high nickel-content positive electrodes and graphite negative electrodes as part of the Faraday Institution’s Battery Degradation project. In 2021, Wesley joined the faculty at the University of Leicester (United Kingdom) as a Lecturer in the School of Chemistry and started his own independent research group. He moved in 2022 to UNSW (Sydney, Australia) to take up a DECRA Research Fellow position in the School of Chemistry. Wesley’s current research interests are energy storage materials for applications in current and emerging battery chemistries including lithium-ion, sodium-ion, and other ‘beyond’ lithium-ion chemistries. He is particularly focused on the synthesis and electrochemical characterisation of advanced materials and understanding the interfacial chemistry at electrode-electrolyte interfaces.

My Research Activities

We investigate the structure-property-function relationships of energy storage materials for applications in various battery chemistries including lithium-ion and ‘beyond’ lithium-ion.

Electrochemical energy storage is a key technology in the global energy transition to cleaner sources and to mitigate climate change. Batteries with application-tailored performance characteristics are needed for an ever increasing number of applications, such as for electric vehicles (EVs) and grid-scale storage. These batteries must be high energy, long duration, low cost, use non-critical and sustainably-sourced materials, and be able to be recycled. This challenge requires the development of new battery materials (electrodes, electrolytes, and separators) and a clear understanding of how these materials behave in devices. It also necessitates that battery materials, cells, and modules are designed for recycle.

Our core research activities include the synthetic design of advanced battery materials, understanding the evolution and degradation of materials and establishing links to the electrochemical behaviour, and investigation of the interfacial chemistry at the electrode-electrolyte interface. We employ a wide range of physicochemical and electrochemical characterisation techniques, such as X-ray/neutron diffraction, electron microscopies, X-ray absorption spectroscopy, NMR, ICP, electrochemical methods, and more. Combined, these enable us to uncover new fundamental understanding of how materials behave and interact, and to address the most critical problems facing current and future battery chemistries.

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