Battery Research Award for Empa researcher

On October 16, Empa young researcher Léo Duchêne received the prestigious Battery Division Student Research Award of the Electrochemical Society in Atlanta, USA. Since 1979, this research prize has been awarded to promising young scientists in the field of electrochemical energy storage. Duchêne's results on solid-state batteries, which he worked on during the last four years of his doctoral thesis at Empa, were honored with the award. This type of battery should make it possible in future to store almost twice as much energy as today's batteries and at the same time guarantee a high level of safety and reliability. Duchêne is researching a new family of electrolytes - inorganic hydroborate electrolytes - at Empa in Dübendorf under the direction of Arndt Remhof and Corsin Battaglia. This novel class of electrolytes are non-flammable and non-toxic. The researchers were able to demonstrate a all-solid-state battery with several hundred charging and discharging cycles.