Bio-Templated and Bio-Tethered Materials for a Flexible Lithium Ion Battery

Nature has a diverse toolkit that can be utilized to address a broad array of important chemistry related problems.  These tools include DNA, lipids, polysaccharides, and proteins, each of which have been used for direct applications from sensors to electronics.  Proteins represent nature’s most diverse polymer with a range of functionality determined by 20 naturally encoded amino acids.  The structure and chemical functionality of each amino acid determine the properties of the polypeptide that they compose.  In this presentation I will discuss the use of biomolecules in order to self-organize flexible electrodes for lithium ion batteries.  

The focus of my group is to identify functional polypeptides for the purpose of improving technologically relevant materials.  Our lab uses a technique called phage display in order to identify solid binding polypeptides that are specific for binding to and the mineralization of electroactive materials and use these materials to prepare new lithium ion batteries. Peptides that are identified are then genetically combined with other polypeptides in order to generate multi-functional polypeptides that can then be used to lash together myriad materials into a hierarchically assembled structure.  This current work focuses on making these materials more flexible through the addition of bio-molecules.