From Molecules to Batteries and Beyond: Celebrating PNNL’s Energy Storage Legacy

Fifteen years ago, researchers from the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) helped create the world’s smallest battery. At just 16 micrometers long and 188 nanometers wide, the battery fits within a transmission electron microscope, allowing researchers to observe at an atomic level what happens when a battery charges and discharges.

Published in Science in 2010, that observation enabled researchers to better understand what properties extend the lifetime of a battery, said Chongmin Wang, a materials scientist and Laboratory Fellow at PNNL who was involved in the work.

And from there, “we were able to quickly redesign battery materials for energy storage,” said Jie Xiao, a Boeing Martin Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington and a Battelle Fellow at PNNL.

That finding was one result of a focused effort by PNNL to invest more funding into energy storage research—and that investment has enabled PNNL researchers to become leaders in energy storage research and applications.

New opportunities, new materials

But let’s back up. 

Twenty years ago, PNNL excelled in many different research areas, but energy storage wasn’t one of them. Starting around 2006, Laboratory leadership convened to identify research and development gaps where PNNL’s materials science expertise could shine.

The team, led by Battelle Fellow and materials expert Jun Liu, realized that energy storage was a wide-open market. 

“At that time, very few people were thinking about energy storage on a grid scale,” said Jud Virden, formerly the Associate Laboratory Director for PNNL’s Energy and Environment directorate who now leads the National Laboratory of the Rockies as laboratory director. 

The nation’s electric grid is a vast network of electricity generators, transmission lines, substations, and distribution lines, all connecting more than 330 million people to electricity when they need it. The researchers knew that demand for electricity would grow and decided that PNNL could be a part of developing technology to support that growth. 

The team also identified a clear gap in the Laboratory’s capabilities: while PNNL had plenty of materials and electrochemical experts, it was lacking a focus on batteries and needed to grow expertise within the United States, Virden said.

Through a Laboratory-funded program established in 2007 called the Transformational Materials Science Initiative (TMSI), PNNL brought on more battery researchers like Xiao and new equipment to advance the research. 

Soon after, the team at PNNL, in partnership with DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories, made their ground-breaking observation of the world’s smallest battery.

Over the following decades, two streams emerged for PNNL’s battery research: in addition to developing batteries that can support the power grid, PNNL researchers also dove into research on batteries for transportation uses. Through TMSI and other lab-funded efforts, a new consortium emerged in 2016 called Battery500, co-led by DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office and PNNL and made up of experts from other national labs, academia, and industry. 

Research through the consortium has led to advances in lithium technology with a focus on vehicle batteries, but the science and discoveries go well beyond to affecting the state-of-the-art for all other applications, including military. In 2021 for instance, researchers created a pouch cell lithium-metal battery that lasts longer than other lithium-metal batteries built before it. This year, PNNL researchers discovered a chemical process that could allow battery companies to more affordably manufacture longer-lasting lithium batteries, and to do so here within the United States.

In grid energy storage research, PNNL researchers have developed new electrolytes that have been licensed by private companies. In the last couple years, two different efforts have emerged to develop batteries made primarily of sodium, which is a much more abundant and affordable element than lithium. What’s more, sodium could help relieve supply chain stress for other materials like cobalt and nickel. 

Teaming up with utilities, industry

While some researchers studied chemical reactions and experimented with materials, others were meeting with utilities to find out how large-scale energy storage could help support the nation’s growing electric grid. 

“We became known as the people out in the field who understand the real-world energy storage needs of utilities,” Virden said. “And back at the Laboratory, we had the expertise and scientific capabilities to start looking at new material sets that could fill those needs in a more affordable way.”

Working with utilities helped the researchers understand the real-world challenges and limitations of energy storage, which provided new paths forward for research questions, said Vince Sprenkle, director of the Department of Energy’s Grid Storage Launchpad (GSL), which operates on PNNL’s Richland campus. The facility was funded in part by DOE’s Office of Electricity, the state of Washington, and Battelle. It opened in August of 2024 and has space for new battery materials development as well as testing facilities for battery manufacturers. Soon, battery manufacturers will be able to bring their energy storage systems to GSL to validate their technologies. 

PNNL’s energy storage future and legacy

Through it all, Virden emphasized the importance of people. “More than a building or programs, it’s the quality of the people that drive the quality of our research,” Virden said. “At the beginning, it was a willingness to put together different skills and capabilities that wouldn't normally come together, like battery materials scientists, and characterization experts.”

Virden also highlighted PNNL’s strong focus on mentoring the next generation of leaders in energy storage. 

“If you look at the people today who are being recognized, they were people who were brand new to all of this five or eight years ago,” Virden said.

And now those people are Laboratory or Battelle Fellows.

“PNNL made a long-term commitment to those researchers by buying the necessary equipment and facilities that would enable them to be the best in the world, the best in the country and do really good work.”