Yifei Mo

Yifei Mo

Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland.

New, Superfast Method for Ceramic Manufacturing Could Open Door to AI-Driven Materials Discovery

1 minute read

Published:

Conventional ceramic sintering — the firing step that hardens ceramic materials — typically takes hours, a bottleneck for developing new solid-electrolyte and other functional ceramics. A UMD team led by Professor Liangbing Hu reinvented the process into an ultrafast high-temperature sintering method, sandwiching a pressed ceramic pellet between carbon strips that heat it by radiation and conduction to temperatures up to 3,000°C in under 10 seconds — over 1,000 times faster than a traditional furnace.

Professor Yifei Mo collaborated on the study, published on the cover of Science, which also involved Bao Yang, J.C. Zhao, and Howard Wang at UMD along with researchers at UC San Diego and UCLA.

“This new method solves the key bottleneck problem in computation and AI-guided materials discovery.” — Yifei Mo

By collapsing sintering time from tens of hours to seconds, the technique clears a path for rapidly synthesizing and testing the large numbers of candidate materials that computational and AI-driven materials discovery can generate — with applications spanning solid-state batteries, fuel cells, and 3D-printed ceramics. The technology is being commercialized through the UMD spinoff HighT-Tech LLC.

“A general method to synthesize and sinter bulk ceramics in seconds” appears in Science, 368, 521-526 (2020) (DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz7681).

Read the full story at the UMD MSE news page.

You May Also Enjoy

New Oxyhalide Electrolyte Breaks Barriers for Solid-State Battery Performance

1 minute read

Published:

A team led by Professor Yifei Mo, working with the University of Western Ontario and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has developed a new class of oxyhalide solid electrolytes that combine fast lithium-ion transport with strong chemical stability — two properties that have historically been difficult to achieve in the same material.

Advanced Solid Electrolytes Break World Record for Ionic Conductivity

less than 1 minute read

Published:

A team led by Professor Yifei Mo, together with the Georgia Institute of Technology and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has pushed the ionic conductivity of halide solid electrolytes to a new record by strategically tuning how anions move within the crystal lattice.

The Battery Revolution

less than 1 minute read

Published:

Fires in phones, laptops, and even a jumbo jet share a common cause: the flammable liquid electrolyte inside conventional lithium-ion batteries. Alongside their fire risk, these batteries also fall short on charging speed and energy density — driving researchers to look for a safer, better alternative.