Visiting Chair from the Collège de France 2025

Program

Seminar: Batteries and Solid State Physics: An Inseparable Link

Wednesday, 26 November 2025
Time: 14:30
Room A206
Polo Ferrari 1 
Via Sommarive 5 - 38123 Povo

Batteries, as one of the most versatile energy storage technologies, play a central role in the ongoing transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Therefore, the enhancement of the battery performance, reliability, longevity and sustainability becomes a crucial challenge for the years to come. To address these various aspects, disruptive approaches enlisting either new materials, new reactivity concepts or new diagnostic tools to monitor intertwined complex physical/chemical processes within the battery under real working conditions are needed. This presentation will recall that physicists were the first to study the type of materials (oxides or chalcogenides) used in Li-ion batteries. Afterwards the interlink between both physics and chemistry will be described through specific examples dealing with either the new concept of anionic redox or the use of fiber optics sensors to monitor the state of health of batteries, to name only a few. 

The seminar will be held in English.

Visiting Chair

Jean-Marie Tarascon is Professor at the Collège de France holding the chair “Chemistry of Solids – Energy,” but much of his early career was spent in the US where he discovered plastic Li-ion technology. Back in France in 1995, he founded the European network of excellence ALISTORE-ERI and more recently the French network on electrochemical energy storage (RS2E). Tarascon’s present research is devoted to battery materials/electrolytes, novel reactivity concepts, chemistries beyond lithium and sensing. He is the author of about 700 scientific papers, holds more than 100 patents and has received numerous awards. Among the latest, the Balzan Prize in 2020, the CNRS Gold Medal in 2022 and the 2024 IBA Medal of Excellence.

Contact Information

Department of Physics
Via Sommarive 14, 38123 Povo (TN)
tel. 0461.281504 
e-mail: df.supportstaff@unitn.it

Academic Coordinator

Professor Matteo Calandra Buonaura
Department of Physics
tel. 0461.282037
e-mail: m.calandrabuonaura@unitn.it