Jordi Cabana, PhD
Co-Director
Professor - Department of Chemistry / Electro-chemical Group Lead - Materials Science Division / Scientist - Argonne National Laboratory
About
Jordi Cabana is a professor of chemistry at University of Illinois Chicago and electro-chemical group lead and scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. His research group is generally interested in the physical and inorganic chemistry of materials, with emphasis on redox and transport properties. They aim to provide chemistry solutions to technological problems in energy applications, with a current focus on electrochemical energy storage, which is critical in the development of a green economy based on renewable sources. His group combines approaches from classical solid state chemistry with nanoscience, with the goal of contributing to a unified field, where, for instance, synthesis of complex new compounds can rapidly be transitioned to their nano/mesoscale tailoring.
His group's interests in inorganic chemistry lie in significantly improving our ability to synthesize compositionally and morphologically complex, stable, functional materials. One of their current thrusts involves increasing the applicability of colloidal synthesis of nanocrystals to high levels of chemical complexity. The second thrust focuses on the solid state chemistry of mixed anion compounds. It involves extending existing knowledge into new chemical spaces, with the general principle of synergistically tailoring chemical bonding and physical properties. The presence of secondary anions can introduce crystal structural disorder that favors ion diffusion, as well as stabilize transition metals in high formal oxidation states. These thrusts will allow them to explore the boundaries of ionic conduction, redox and intercalation chemistry of solids, as well as the limits of electrochemical energy storage.
The group's interests in physical chemistry center on defining the chemical pathways of redox phase transformations in solids. They are interested in phenomena that occur at multiple length scales, from atomic to macroscopic, or, in other words, from single crystals to particle assemblies. For this purpose, they strongly rely on X-ray-based tools, particularly those accessible at synchrotron facilities such as the Advanced Photon Source, at Argonne National Laboratory. The group has demonstrated a variety of methodologies of chemical imaging at several spatial resolutions, both in 2D and 3D (see figure), and currently push to break the technical boundaries to be able to image increasingly small single crystals during the transformation.