Sundeep Vema

Dr Sundeep Vema

BTech MTech PhD

Sundeep Vema is a postdoctoral researcher at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. His research focuses on understanding why solid-state lithium-ion batteries fail.

Sundeep Vema

Sundeep received a Dual Degree (BTech and MTech) in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India in 2018. He became interested in research on lithium-ion batteries during his undergraduate studies. He subsequently pursued a PhD at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Professor Dame Clare P Grey and the co-supervision of Professor Vikram S Deshpande and Professor Norman A Fleck. His PhD research, funded by the Cambridge Trust and the Royal Society, sought to understand the surface reactivity, dopant local structure and dendrite initiation in garnet solid electrolyte based solid-state lithium-ion batteries. During his PhD, he custom-built numerous setups for solid electrolyte fabrication and characterisation and established a solid-state battery testing facility in the Department of Engineering.

He is currently a postdoctoral researcher working on providing fundamental insights into some of the remaining significant performance-limiting phenomena in solid-state batteries.

Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries have enabled the widespread usage of portable electronic devices. Although highly efficient, traditional lithium-ion batteries can catch fire and lose capacity quickly especially at high temperatures, during fast charge-discharge cycles and when high-voltage cathodes are used to increase energy and powder density of batteries. Solid-state batteries (SSBs) can theoretically overcome these limitations by replacing the flammable and unstable organic liquid electrolyte in traditional lithium-ion batteries with a solid electrolyte (ceramic).

Sundeep’s research tries to address some of the most challenging issues in the widespread adoption of SSBs namely, the formation of lithium metal dendrites and void formation at electrode-electrolyte interface in SSBs. He uses a wide range of techniques spanning different lengths and time scales to probe the factors that govern these phenomena and ultimately understand why SSBs fail and how they can be improved.

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