Gao Liu
Dr. Gao Liu is a Senior Scientist and Group Leader of the Applied Energy Materials Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is also a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry. With over 20 years of experience in developing materials and system engineering for electrical energy storage, Dr. Liu’s research integrates synthetic chemistry, composite engineering, and electrochemistry to address interdisciplinary challenges in energy generation, storage, and usage.
Dr. Liu’s lab employs advanced diagnostics to uncover fundamental and critical issues in energy systems and utilizes synthetic techniques to create new materials that enhance overall system performance. He pioneered research in multifunctional conductive polymer adhesives and has significantly contributed to the fundamental understanding of polymeric binder behaviors in composite electrodes. This work has led to the rational design of functional electrode binders for new storage chemistries.
Dr. Liu’s current research in energy storage encompasses a broad range of topics, including electrode binders, silicon, sulfur, and lithium metal materials, electrode engineering, electrolytes and additives, and solid-state conductors. In addition to energy storage research, he is also involved in materials and engineering research focused on building resiliency, circular economy, and advanced manufacturing.
Dr. Liu serves as the Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) Consortium lead and coordinator for the Net Zero World Initiative, a global partnership dedicated to helping countries achieve their climate goals and accelerate transitions to net zero, resilient, and inclusive energy systems. He has authored over 190 peer-reviewed publications and holds 28 granted patents.
Awards
2022 R&D 100 Award: Quick-Release™ Binder for Recyclable Batteries - August 22nd 2022
The Quick-ReleaseTM Binder solves a major challenge of materials recovery for Li-ion battery direct recycling. The current recycling process, which includes shredding, grinding, and pyrolysis of the materials, is highly energy intensive and has a large environmental footprint. The Quick-Release Binder eliminates these processes–as well as the production of toxic gases–by using water processes for manufacturing and recycling. All the battery components simply dissociate in pH adjusted water and are easily recovered and reprocessed. As a low-cost, nontoxic, and effective product, the Quick-Release binder represents a major technological advancement, and it facilitates the use and expansion of green energy storage, supporting international efforts to create a circular economy.
2015 R&D 100 Award - November 17th 2015
A team led by Gao Liu of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab’s) Energy Storage & Distributed Resources Division has won a 2015 R&D 100 award for developing a high-capacity anode for rechargeable batteries. Berkeley Lab’s Hui Zhao also participated in the development, as did Zeptor co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Chuck Consorte.
The material and process developments from Berkeley Lab and Zeptor finally made it possible to transition from low-capacity graphite anodes to economical, high-capacity silicon anodes. The technology is already moving toward commercialization; Zeptor is using it to produce a high-capacity rechargeable battery that can double the lifespan of a state-of-the-art lithium-ion battery, increasing capacity by 40 percent. Pilot tests show a higher capacity, a longer lifespan, improved safety, and lower costs than state-of-the-art batteries.
In addition, the Berkeley Lab and Zeptor team is also working with consumer electronics and electric vehicle manufacturers to improve lithium-ion battery performance in those sectors, and the end users are planning to use the resulting high-energy-density battery in the next generation of products.
R&D Magazine’s annual R&D 100 Awards recognize the top 100 technology products from industry, academia, and government-sponsored research. For more information on the awards, see the links below.
FMC Corporation Scientific Achievement Award - April 30th 2014
A team of scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Argonne National Laboratory was recognized by FMC Corporation for the FMC Scientific Achievement Award, presented by Aaron Reichl, Director of Technology for FMC Minerals, and Marina Yakovleva, Global Technical Programs Manager. The team performed fundamental research on the lithium metal technology (SLMP®) and helped identify methodologies for application of the stabilized lithium metal powder into high-energy lithium-ion batteries for consumer and transportation applications. This work is part of the Integrated Laboratories and Industry Research Program, supported by the Battery for Advanced Transportation Technologies Program of Vehicle Technologies Office of U.S. Department of Energy.
The Berkeley lab awardees are Principal Investigators Gao Liu, Vincent Battaglia and Andrew M. Minor, as well as Postdocs: Zhihui Wang, Bin Xiang, Sang-Jae Park, and Lei Wang.
2013 R&D 100 - July 8th 2013
Gao Liu and his team developed a technology to boost the power storage capacity of lithium-ion batteries. The new material, for use in rechargeable batteries, can boost power storage capacity by 30 percent, a dramatic improvement in a field marked by little progress for more than a decade. It is called Conducting Polymer Binder, literally a kind of flexible plastic glue that holds electrode materials together while facilitating the shuttling of electrons and positively charged lithium ions.
Presented by R&D Magazine, the R&D 100 Awards recognize the year’s top 100 technology products from industry, academia, and government-sponsored research, ranging from chemistry to materials to biomedical breakthroughs.
Find out more about this technology at the links below.
Third Prize, Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative Innovation Expo Poster Session - October 18th 2012
"Conductive polymer binder based silicon composite anode for high-energy lithium-ion battery technology" has won Third Place in the Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative's Innovation Expo Poster Competition at the 2012 BERC Energy Symposium Innovation Expo. This work is led by Environmental Energy Technologies Division scientist Gao Liu, with postdoc Shidi Xun, Mingyan Wu, and Sang-Jea Park in the BATT program in collaboration with Wanli Yang of the Advanced Light Source, Lin-Wang Wang of the Materials Sciences Division, and Vince Battaglia of EETD.
University of California 2011 Discovery Grant - September 16th 2011
For a conductive polymer binder that significantly improves the performance of electrodes in silicon composite electrodes.
Most Excellent Poster Award - July 18th 2008
At the 14th International Meeting on Lithium Ion Batteries in Tianjin, China in June, a poster titled "Particles and Binder Interaction in the Lithium-ion Cell Electrodes," was one of 12 posters that won "Most Excellent Poster Award" among 600 posters on lithium battery technology presented in this meeting. IMLB meeting is a major international conference on lithium battery technology. This is the only award presented at the conference.
The IMLB conference rotates among locations in Europe, Asian, and North American every two years.