深夜福利国产精品

Biography

Nuria Tapia-Ruiz is associate professor in the Department of 深夜福利国产精品 at Imperial College London, where she leads a multidisciplinary group that focuses on the chemistry of materials for next-generation lithium-ion and beyond-lithium-ion batteries, with a particular interest in novel electrode materials, electrolytes, and the interphases that form between them. Her group combines advanced diffraction and spectroscopic techniques at large-scale facilities including the Diamond Light Source, ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, and the ESRF, with electrochemistry and computation to understand how these materials behave under real operating conditions.
 
Nuria graduated in chemistry from the University of Barcelona and obtained her PhD at the University of Glasgow working on materials for energy storage and conversion. She then held postdoctoral positions at the University of St Andrews and the University of Oxford working on Na-ion batteries. She began her independent career as a lecturer at Lancaster University in 2017, was promoted to senior lecturer in 2020, and moved her group to Imperial College London in 2022.

There's something very satisfying about taking an element nobody thought was glamorous and showing what it can do.

Nuria Tapia-Ruiz

Q&A

Can you tell us more about your work?

I work on batteries, trying to make them cheaper, safer, longer lasting, and built from materials that are kinder to the planet.

Most of the batteries we use today, whether in our phones, our laptops or electric cars, are lithium-ion. They're a remarkable piece of technology and they've transformed our lives, but there's still a huge amount of room to make them better: longer-lasting, faster-charging, safer, and produced more sustainably. A big part of my group's work focuses on exactly that, developing improved materials for the next generation of lithium-ion batteries.

Alongside this, we also work on a range of more sustainable battery technologies that go beyond lithium. Sodium-ion is one of them, using an element that's abundant and cheap and available almost anywhere in the world (it's the same element you find in table salt and seawater). We also look at other emerging chemistries that rely on widely available elements and aim to reduce the need for scarce or environmentally costly materials. These technologies aren't replacements for lithium-ion so much as complements to it, each one well suited to particular uses, from storing renewable energy on the grid to powering devices where cost and sustainability matter most.

A battery has three main parts: two electrodes that store electrical charge, and a liquid between them, called the electrolyte, that lets the charge move back and forth. We design new materials for all three. We're particularly interested in what happens right where the liquid meets the solid electrode, a layer only a few atoms thick that has an enormous influence on whether a battery is safe, how fast it charges, and how many years it lasts. To study this, we use some remarkable large-scale facilities, like the Diamond synchrotron, which let us look inside a battery while it's working and watch the chemistry unfold in real time.

All this matters because the move away from fossil fuels can't happen without better batteries. We need them to store electricity from the sun and the wind for when it's dark and still. We need affordable electric cars that can drive for the longest time possible. And we need batteries that can power homes and small grids in parts of the world where today's options are out of reach. Improving lithium-ion and bringing more sustainable chemistries into the picture are both part of getting there, and it's genuinely exciting to be working on this at a moment when so much of it is starting to reach the real world.

What have been the biggest challenges that you have faced over the course of your time in science, and what have you learned from those experiences? 

Moving country, moving institutions, and building a research group essentially from scratch twice has been challenging in ways I didn't fully anticipate. Relocating my lab from Lancaster to Imperial in 2022 was a huge logistical and emotional undertaking, especially with a group of students and postdocs whose projects couldn't simply pause. What I've learned is that resilience in science is about asking for help early and building a network of people who'll back you and give you the best possible advice. I've also learned to be kinder to myself when things don't move at the pace I'd like.

What do you wish more people understood about your field or the chemical sciences in general? 

Batteries look quite simple from the outside; from the inside, there's a staggering amount of careful design going on. And I'd love people to understand that sustainability isn't something you sprinkle on at the end. It has to be designed in from the first choice you make about which element to use.

What does good research culture mean to you, and why does it matter? 

A lab with a good research culture is a lab where people feel safe to ask questions, admit when something didn't work, and disagree respectfully. It's a place where diversity is a genuine source of intellectual strength.

How can scientists try to improve the environmental sustainability of research? Can you give us any examples from your own experience or context? 

In my group, we choose earth-abundant chemistries from the start, that's a big part of why sodium-ion batteries and other sustainable battery chemistries appeal to me. We are moving away from some of the more problematic solvents and other components as much as we can, and we try to design materials with end-of-life in mind rather than as an afterthought. None of it is very revolutionary on its own, but it adds up.

What is your favourite element and why? 

Sodium. I like that it's ordinary. It's in seawater, it's on your kitchen table, it's been hiding in plain sight while lithium got all the attention. There's something very satisfying about taking an element nobody thought was glamorous and showing what it can do.