Chibueze Amanchukwu likes to focus on a somewhat neglected realm of battery research. To produce more-efficient and longer-lasting batteries to store the electricity generated by the renewable energy boom, researchers have delivered a slew of improvements in electrode materials and other key components. But electrolytes, which carry ions back and forth between electrodes, have often been overlooked.

Amanchukwu aims to change that. His team at the University of Chicago is developing entirely new classes of electrolytes to boost the efficiency of conventional lithium-ion batteries as well as next-generation lithium-metal batteries. He’s also developing electrolytes for other forms of energy storage, including electrochemical cells that convert carbon dioxide into useful products. “He’s a wonderful, enthusiastic individual and an exceptionally talented scientist,” says Zhenan Bao of Stanford University, Amanchukwu’s postdoctoral supervisor.

Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Amanchukwu moved with his family to Houston when he was a teenager. He was enrolled in classes there that were commensurate with his talent rather than his age. As a result, he graduated from high school at 15 and completed his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at Texas A&M University at just 19. After catching the battery bug during an internship at DuPont, he focused on lithium-air batteries while doing his PhD work with Paula Hammond at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Conventional lithium-ion batteries typically use an electrolyte of lithium salts in organic solvents such as ethylene carbonate to shuttle lithium ions between a graphite anode and a metal oxide cathode. Lithium-metal batteries are lighter because they contain lithium-metal anodes instead of graphite. Lithium-air batteries go one step further in shaving off weight by using a porous carbon cathode to host reactions between oxygen and lithium ions during charging. In principle, a lithium-air battery could store roughly 10 times as much energy as a lithium-ion battery of the same weight.

The downside is that lithium and oxygen combine to produce superoxide and peroxide species that are highly reactive and degrade both the cathode material and the electrolyte. “Controlling that reactivity has been the main challenge that continues to plague lithium-air batteries,” Amanchukwu says.

During his postdoc with Bao, Amanchukwu developed fluorinated ether solvents that are stable against these superoxides and peroxides and that enable lithium to enter and leave the metal anode more efficiently. Since establishing his own research group in 2020, he has continued to fine-tune the fluoroethers to further enhance their properties and has found that they also enable faster charging and a wider range of operating temperatures in good old lithium-ion batteries.

“The degradation chemistry of electrolytes has not been considered to be all that exciting,” says the University of Cambridge battery scientist Clare Grey, who hosted Amanchukwu as a visiting fellow in 2019. “But he’s part of a cohort bringing in new synthesis and characterization methods, and just some good physical chemistry, into the space.”

Still, some electrolyte solvents have downsides like volatility and flammability. So Amanchukwu has developed a series of solvent-free electrolytes that are based on nonvolatile and nonflammable salts that melt at relatively low temperatures. Lithium-metal batteries equipped with these molten salt electrolytes can operate at 80 °C, and Amanchukwu says recent unpublished improvements from his lab have reduced that to ambient temperature.

He’s also using electrolyte chemistry to improve electrochemical systems that convert CO₂ into useful compounds. These systems take electricity generated from solar or wind farms and then use water as a source of protons to form products such as ethylene or ethanol. Unfortunately, these electrochemical cells also generate a lot of hydrogen gas, which lowers process efficiency. His team has tried to increase efficiency by adding simple salts and organic solvents to the electrolyte—a tweak that suppresses hydrogen formation while boosting CO₂ conversion.

In addition to pursuing his electrolyte revolution, Amanchukwu is nurturing the next generation of chemists who might work on sustainable energy technologies. He founded Research Experience for Nigerian Engineering Undergraduates, a program that matches mentors in the US with talented students to give them research experience and help them be more competitive when applying for PhD programs. “The Industrial Revolution really left certain parts of the world behind,” he says. “We cannot allow the renewable energy revolution that is happening now to leave us further behind again.”