Sang Cheol's research focuses on probing and designing electrolytes for Li batteries. He employs both top-down approaches using data-driven methods to understand and design electrolytes, as well as bottom-up approaches, developing tools to characterize the thermodynamics of electrolytes and constructing novel design frameworks.                                            

Our understanding of electrolyte solvation is lagging behind its significance. Utilizing potentiometric methods, we develop novel characterization techniques to probe the solvation free energy and entropy in battery electrolytes.

• Potentiometric measurement to probe solvation energy and its correlation to lithium battery cyclability

• Correlating Li-Ion Solvation Structures and Electrode Potential Temperature Coefficients

Our understanding of electrolyte thermodynamics can be leveraged in designing novel strategies for electrolyte engineering. We design fast-charging electrolytes that can stably cycle with high-voltage anode-free Li metal batteries. 

• High-entropy electrolytes for practical lithium metal batteries

Electrolyte engineering is a complex problem involving many physicochemical phenomena at different length scales. We deploy a machine learning approach to extract previously unidentified insights from empirical datasets and optimize the Li metal anode cyclability.

• Data-driven electrolyte design for lithium metal anodes