Lithium-ion batteries are being used in a growing number of everyday devices—cellphones, laptops, electric vehicles—and it is important to reduce their life-cycle environmental impacts reduced to a minimum. Mickaël Dollé is working to make them greener. He has already patented a technique for recovering cathode materials from lithium-ion batteries to make new batteries without generating waste. Batteries can now be produced in a circular economy-type closed loop.
A chemist by training, Dollé has a general interest in ecodesign: how batteries can be made with less energy and greener materials. One way is to replace fluorine-based materials that require the use of toxic solvents and complicate recycling with new polymers. In 2020, Dollé and his colleagues designed a battery made from water and wood, an achievement that was selected as the scientific discovery of the year by the readers of Québec Science magazine.
Before joining the University of Montreal in 2014, Dollé completed postdoctoral studies at the Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory and the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart. He also worked as a researcher at the CNRS in France.
The research program of his Courtois Chair focuses on high-throughput screening of glasses and glass ceramics through the automation of synthesis and physicochemical characterization, supported by simulations. While there are several tools available to predict the existence and properties of crystalline materials, especially for batteries, there is no equivalent tool for glasses and glass ceramics. Machine learning algorithms can use this database to assist us in the rational design and development of glasses and glass ceramics with controlled properties and/or new phases.
Solid-state chemistry, materials science, and electrochemistry will be at the core of the activities, with a strong interest in understanding the relationship between development (synthesis and processing)/microstructure/properties in order to improve existing materials or create new ones.
The targeted outcomes include generating fundamental knowledge related to energy transition and the exploration of innovative concepts in order to design novel materials for future technologies.
