- Salary:
£30,395 to £39,609 p.a.
- Contact:
The School of Metallurgy and Materials and the University of Birmingham have recently been awarded a research project grant from Innovate UK to develop, test and scale-up new ultra-high power cells for electric vehicle batteries that have very high peak power handling capability, whilst improving on the energy density of competitive high power energy storage devices such as super capacitors – Scalable Ultra-Power Electric-vehicle Batteries (SUPErB). This is a collaborative project with six partners – QinetiQ, University College London, Aston Martin, the University of Birmingham, Echion and William Blythe.
Working as part of a multidisciplinary team with the other SUPERB project researchers and within the Energy Materials Group at the University of Birmingham, the aim is to produce materials at scale from the outset and test optimised materials in commercial grade cells of intermediate capacity (ca. 3 Ah). The consortium will be assisted by researchers at the University of Birmingham who will further improve material properties through synthesis and electrochemical testing of materials, developing ink formulations to improve performance, and provide evaluations of manufacturing protocols to understand interface formation. QinetiQ will produce the multilayer ultra-high power cells pouch cell to benchmark the technology. This role will involve working within the SUPErB project and contribute to the synthesis, characterisation and electrochemical testing of a novel high power device and leading the reporting requirements to the Lead Partner. Working within the specified research grant and project, the postholder will analyse and interpret research findings and results, providing the technical expertise in battery material properties.The postholder will develop research objectives and proposals for research, contribute to writing bids for future research funding, analyse and interpret data and apply knowledge in a way which develops new intellectual understanding.