News
2025
12/12/2025
Yifei Sun from Cornell University spent one week with our group designing in situ experiments to investigate the microstructural evolution of solid-state batteries. The discussions were highly productive and encouraging, leading to new experimental strategies for probing structure–property relationships under operating conditions. During her visit, she also delivered an inspiring seminar entitled “Structural Dynamics of Energy Storage Materials with Bragg Coherent Diffractive Imaging,” which stimulated insightful discussions and strong interest among faculty and students.
12/10/2025
Our manuscript entitled “Enhanced Cycling Stability of Ni-Rich Li-Metal Cells Enabled by Dual Vinylene Carbonate and Tris(trimethylsilyl) Borate Electrolyte Additives” has been accepted by RSC Applied Interfaces, congratulations to all the authors, ZiShuo, Yunyuan, and Yuwei!
12/05/2025
Declan OConnor is awarded the FURI (https://em.engineering.asu.edu/cases/energy-inquiry-fulton-undergraduate-research-initiative-furi) funding to engineer material surfaces for stable direct Lithium extraction for the 2026 Spring. Big congratulations!
11/17/2025
Yuwei’s coauthor paper has been accepted by Journal of The Electrochemical Society, this was a very nice collaboration with Dr. Lin Ma at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Please check out here for the just accepted online version: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/1945-7111/ae204f/pdf
11/13/2025
Yuwei’s coauthor paper with UCSD Dr. Zheng Chen’s group has been accepted in ACS Nano, the title is: “In-Situ Surface Reconstruction via Lithium Residue Regulation for Direct Recycling of Ni-Rich Cathodes”, congrats!
10/29/2025
Dr. Mu visited UCSD and gave a department seminar entitled “Advanced Characterization of Cathode Materials in Rechargeable Batteries“.
10/12-10/15
Dr. Mu co-organized several-day symposia on Na-ion batteries in ECS Chicago, and also gave a talk on understanding ion-exchange behavior in layered cathode materials!
09/26/2025
Dr. Co-organized one symposiums for the SLAC, SSRL-LCLS user meeting, and toured the Stanford-SLAC battery center!
09/17/2025
Dr. Mu is honored to be selected as the inaugural Early Career Advisory Board for RSC Applied Interfaces! See the website: https://lnkd.in/e_X3XHgA
Dr. Mu attended the LLZO5W conference at Stanford University, where the team was awarded the Best Poster Prize for the presentation titled “Microstructure Design of Composite Cathodes towards Stable Solid-State Batteries“! Congratulations, Walle, for leading this research!
07/22/2025
Te Bu is awarded the FURI (https://em.engineering.asu.edu/cases/energy-inquiry-fulton-undergraduate-research-initiative-furi) funding to explore the scale-up synthesis of Na cathode materials with us for 2025 fall. Big congrads!
04/27/2025
Congratulations on Yuwei’s co-authored paper published in Advanced Energy Materials!
“Unveiling the Role of Critical Impurities in Spent LiFePO4 Cathodes for Scalable Direct Regeneration”, Please check out here: https://doi.org/10.1002/aenm.202406084
04/24/2025
Undergrade Matthew Jacobs studied interfacial chemistry with us for the past and he was awarded the “Outstanding Honors Thesis” from SEMTE, Congratulations! He took a nice picture with our program chair, Dr. Yang Jiao!
03/07/2025
Mu lab receives a seed funding from Center for Clean Energy Materials (CCEM) to study the formation mechanisms of Na-containing layered oxide!
2024
02/10/2025
Mu Lab welcome undergraduate students, Te Bu and Declan OConnor!
12/10/2024
Mu Lab welcome Mugdha Manish Patil! She will work with us on her MS thesis research on Na ion batteries!
10/28/2024
Mu group welcome the first Postdoc (Kumlachew Zelalem WALLE)! He will work on solid-state batteries!
10/20/2024
Congratulations to Zishuo Zhao on the publication of his co-author paper, “Understanding and Controlling Structural Defects and Disordering in LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 Cathodes for Direct Recycling” in ACS Nano!
That’s a significant collaborative achievement in Li-battery recycling project! Interested? Please check it out here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsnano.4c10164
09/17/2024
Dr. Mu’s previous work entitled “Revealing the Chemical and Structural Complexity of Electrochemical Ion Exchange in Layered Oxide Materials” is published on Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Curious on how we understand the complex ion exchange behavior through multiple advanced characterization techniques, check it out: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.4c08089
08/21/2024
Congratulations to Yuwei Zhu on the co-author paper “Microwave-Assisted Synthesis of P2- and O3-Type NaxCoO2 Cathode Materials Studied by In Situ Raman Spectroscopy” in Chemistry of Materials!
Check it out here: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c01551“
08/13/2024
Mu group is excited to welcome Yunyuan Lu as the new Ph.D candidate starting this fall semester. She will focus on studying composite cathodes for solid-state batteries.
07/20/2024
Mu group received an NSF award to study the microstructure defects in composite electrodes for all-solid-state batteries!
06/03/2024
Mu group welcomes Alex Shaw from Phoenix College to join as an internship undergraduate researcher! Alex will work on NMC interfacial chemistry during the summer.
05/26-05/29
Dr. Mu gave an invited talk on the 245th ECS meeting in San Francisco, CA, and host a section for Battery Student Slam.
05/09/2024
Dr. Mu gave an invited talk on the APS user meeting.
04/23/2024
Dr. Mu gave an talk on the interfacial chemistry and degradation pathway of layered oxide cathode during the 2024 MRS spring meeting.
04/12/2024
Dr. Mu invited Prof. Kelsey A. Stoerzinger to give us a very beautiful virtual talk on ” Epitaxial Perovskite Oxides for Fundamental Insights into the Oxygen Evolution Reaction “
02/24/2024
Group members present their work and performed “fruit batteries” during the ASU open door. It raised a lot of attentions from the young generations as well as parents!
02/09/2024
Dr. Mu hosted the MaterAIZ Seminar presented by Dr. Kang Xu on “Electrolytes, Interfaces and Interphases”! Great historical review on electrochemistry field!
01/11/2024
Our paper entitled “Interfacial degradation of the NMC/Li6PS5Cl composite cathode in all-solid-state batteries” has been accepted by Journal of Materials Chemistry A. Congrads to all the co-authors!
Here is the link for the full paper: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2024/ta/d3ta06092f
2023
12/11/2023
Matthew Jacobs is awarded the FURI (https://em.engineering.asu.edu/cases/energy-inquiry-fulton-undergraduate-research-initiative-furi) funding to study the interfacial chemistry of NMC cathode materials with us for 2024 spring. Big congrads!
12/01/2023
Dr. Mu hosted the MaterAIZ Seminar presented by Prof. Yan-Yan Hu on “NMR/MRI studies of ion transport, interface chemistry, and microstructure formation in solid-state batteries”.
11/17/2023
Dr. Mu hosted the MaterAIZ Seminar presented by Dr. Enyuan Hu on “Developing electrolyte and characterizing interphase for lithium metal batteries”.
09/29/2023
Dr. Mu has organized a half day workshop of SSRL/LCLS User’s Meeting “Fundamental Studies of Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage using Synchrotron X-ray Probes”.
09/15/2023
Dr. Mu hosted the MaterAIZ Seminar and the campus visit by Dr. David Mitlin from UT Austin!
08/18/2023
Dr. Mu has organized a two-day symposium of “Women in Battery Research” at ACS Fall meeting in San Francisco.
06/25/2023
Our review paper “Fundamentals and perspectives of electrolyte additives for non- aqueous Na-ion batteries” has been accepted by the Journal Energy Materials, congratulations on Nicholas Antrasian and Vijayendra Soni!
https://f.oaes.cc/xmlpdf/30caa1ee-dd04-4fda-a1cc-dc765ffe2987/em3022.pdf
02/24/2023
We were thrilled to host the Nobel Prize Winner “M. Stanley Whittingham” on ASU campus, he shared their advanced research results with our undergraduate, graduate, and many other faculty members.
01/24/2023
Mu lab welcomes Yuwei Zhu, he is interested in working on interfacial chemistry in solid-state batteries!
2022
12/05/2022
Mu Lab welcomes Parker Ferguson and Jonathan McGill, they will work on 3D printing batteries!
10/11/2022
Mu gave an talk in ECS Atlanta “Resolving charge distribution for compositionally heterogeneous battery cathode materials”.
9/12/2022
Mu’s co-author paper “Rigid-Rod Sulfonated Polyamide as an Aqueous-Processable Binder for Li-Ion Battery Electrodes” has been accepted by ACS Applied Energy Materials!
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsaem.2c02173
9/9/2022
Welcome Miranda Gonzalez and Drishya Priya Saji!
9/8/2022
Welcome Roman DeCaro, Matthew Jacobs, and Nicholas Antrasian join Mu Lab!
08/20/2022
Welcome MS Zishuo Zhao, Vijayendra Soni, and Aman Saketh Bolem join Mu Lab!