Yiyang Liu

Background
Yiyang completed studies and ranked first at UCL (Master, 2020) and University of Nottingham (Bachelor, 2019). During his undergraduate, he has worked as an intern for 26 months at 7 of top firms, where enhanced his understanding of the industries and comprehensive ability. As one of core members/co-founders, he has also participated in the establishment of four start-ups, which have raised around £ 3M in total. Yiyang joined EIL as a Ph.D. candidate in 2020.

Research Summary
The increasing employment of sustainable energy has put forward higher requirements for next-generation electrochemical energy storage (EES) devices. The aqueous Zinc-based battery (AZB), as an emerging technology, has demonstrated serval charming merits for the grid-scale energy storage compared with lithium-ion batteries. However, the current study on AZB still in an initial stage, where faces the substantial challenges including narrow operation window, sluggish ionic diffusion kinetics, electrode stability issue, insufficient energy density. The further research on AZB will generate knowledge for the relevant fields and advance worldwide scientific capabilities in high-performance, safe and cheap EES technologies. Yiyang’s current research is focusing on the electrode materials innovation, novel electrolyte discovery and comprehensive theoretical investigation.

Publications
Yiyang has contributed to the preparation of 11 publications, 4 of which are first-authored:

1). Y. Liu, G. He, D. J. L. Brett, et al., Cathode design for aqueous rechargeable multivalent ion batteries: challenges and opportunities, Advanced Functional Materials.

2). Y. Liu, J. Min,Y. Sun, et al., A review of biohydrogen productions from lignocellulosic precursor via dark fermentation: perspective on hydrolysate composition and electron-equivalent balance, Energies.

3). Y. Liu, G. He, D. J. L. Brett, et al., Chapter 11: Supercapacitors: History, Theory, Emerging Technologies and Applications”, Advances in Sustainable Energy - Policy, Materials and Devices.

4). Y. Lan, Y. Liu, J. Li, et al., Natural clay-based materials for energy storage and conversion applications, Advanced Science.