Xinhua News Agency, Wuhan, January 28 Title: "Post-85" Professor Youya: She made electric vehicles hope to run "gracefully" in extremely cold areas
Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Wei
As the name suggests, Yuya, looks warm and elegant, but is engaged in "hardcore" work: dealing with various chemical reagents and battery materials every day, sometimes getting busy all night.
"My co-mentor in the United States is Goodenough, one of the founders of the famous lithium-ion battery, the old man in his 90s still insists on going to the laboratory early in the morning and going home late in the evening. She said.
Born in 1988, Yuya has been engaged in postdoctoral research at the University of Texas at Austin since 2015, and after returning to China in 2019, she became a professor at the International Demonstration School of Materials Science and Engineering at Wuhan University of Technology.
Youya, who has been engaged in the synthesis and performance of key materials of electrochemical energy storage devices, received a doctorate in the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and then came to the "academic hall" of longing, but at the beginning there were some "disappointments": the experimental conditions and other hardware in some universities in the United States are not as good as in China, and sometimes it takes a long queue to carry out experiments.
However, Yuya slowly found that the open communication in the laboratory team, the collision of different ideas, and the exchange of heterogeneous cultures benefited her a lot.
On January 19, Yuya presented a handwritten revision of her mentor Goodinaf's paper. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Wei
The door to Mr. Goodenough's office was always open, and he welcomed young people to communicate, patiently listening to their views and encouraging them. This kind of laboratory culture, Yuya saw in her eyes, but also subtly remembered in her heart. Today, in Yuya's team, there are 15 postdocs, doctors, and masters, and a group of young people have gathered for sodium-ion battery research.
After returning to China, What made Youya feel most deeply was the domestic work efficiency, and she deeply felt the importance and care of the school and the college for talents: taking the green channel, completing all the entry procedures in three days, arranging the office in two days, rapidly allocating funds, and building a new platform for the laboratory in two months to realize the whole set from material synthesis and preparation to the assembly performance test of electrochemical devices.
In fact, the application of lithium-ion batteries has been very extensive, why do "Yuya" set their sights on sodium-ion batteries?
It turns out that the biggest problem with lithium-ion batteries is the limited nature of lithium resources. "Thriving" lithium-ion batteries can not fully change the traditional energy structure, "a hundred flowers blooming" of the secondary battery, replacing or supplementing lithium-ion battery energy storage technology has become a hot spot in the international new energy technology competition.
Sodium-ion batteries have the advantages of low cost, long life and high safety performance, which can become a supplement to lithium-ion batteries to a certain extent, alleviate the shortage of lithium resources, and gradually replace lead-acid batteries with serious environmental pollution to ensure energy security and sustainable social development. Sodium-ion batteries are also expected to develop rapidly in low-speed electric vehicles and other fields with their many advantages.
At present, the phenomenon of low-temperature "lying nest" of electric vehicles is controversial. In fact, during Yuya's doctoral studies, under the guidance of her supervisor Guo Yuguo, she realized the operation of sodium-ion batteries at minus 25 degrees Celsius through material design. How to make the sodium-ion battery more "hardy", stable and safe, and then let the electric vehicle move forward steadily in extremely cold areas, has become the current scientific research direction of the Youya team. According to her, the team has been able to achieve stable operation of the battery at minus 50 degrees Celsius under laboratory conditions.
On January 19, Yuya sorted out scientific research materials in her office. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Wei
Yuya is sometimes busy until three or four o'clock in the morning, and then starts to work again at 7 o'clock in the morning, but in her eyes, there is no overtime to say, "Do a line, as long as you have love, it is not too much to invest more time." However, Yuya also has her own work rhythm, as long as she can't bear it, she will choose to rest, pay more attention to efficiency, and take care of work and family, which may be the characteristics of the younger generation of researchers."
This winter vacation, the campus is particularly quiet. Yuya was busier, and in the laboratory, the sound of the instruments was still roaring, and some uninterrupted experiments were still underway. Yuya also has to help students revise their papers and organize and plan the next step of the laboratory's work goals...
Yuya confidently said that it is no exaggeration to say that China has led the world in the research and commercial use of sodium-ion batteries. Facing the future, making many impossibilities in scientific research possible, and making sodium-ion batteries go to the daily lives of the people, scientific researchers need to continue to adhere to research and pursue new breakthroughs, and the mission of young people is on the shoulders.
On January 19, Yuya (right) was exchanging experiments with postdoctoral fellows in the laboratory. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Wei