François Usseglio-Viretta guides development of battery electrode design through multi-scale modeling and high-performance computing  within NREL’s Electrochemical Energy Storage group. Francois’ research focuses on improving the cost, performance, and lifetime of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. His work includes advances in electrode microstructure architectures for fast charging and next-generation silicon anodes. Francois is the lead developer of an open-source application for the analysis of electrode microstructure 3D volumes, the Microstructure Analysis Toolbox  used at NREL for energy storage and biomass materials. Before joining NREL, Francois did his doctorate at the CEA-Liten (Grenoble, France), modeling solid oxide electrolyzer cell at different scales.

Research Interests

Battery electrode microstructure scale analysis

Advanced electrode microstructure (dual layer, dual pore network) for fast charging

Electrochemical mechanical energy storage modeling

Education

Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Grenoble Alpes University/French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission

M.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Technology of Belfort Montbeliard

B.S., Mathematics, University Aix-Marseille III

Professional Experience

Researcher, NREL (2018–present)

Postdoctoral Researcher, NREL (2016–2018)

Research Engineer, CEA-Liten (2010–2011)

Featured Work

Carbon-Binder Weight Loading Optimization for Improved Lithium-Ion Battery Rate Capability, Journal of The Electrochemical Society (2022)

MATBOX: An Open-Source Microstructure Analysis Toolbox for Microstructure Generation, Segmentation, Characterization, Visualization, Correlation, and Meshing, SoftwareX (2022)

A Segregated Approach for Modeling the Electrochemistry in the 3-D Microstructure of Li-Ion Batteries and Its Acceleration Using Block Preconditioners, Journal of Scientific Computing (2021)

Laser Ablation of Li-Ion Electrodes For Fast Charging: Material Properties, Rate Capability, Li Plating, And Wetting, Journal of Power Sources (2022)

Enabling Fast Charging of Lithium-Ion Batteries Through Secondary- /Dual- Pore Network: Part II – Numerical Model, Electrochimica Acta (2020)

Enabling Fast Charging of Lithium-Ion Batteries Through Secondary- /Dual- Pore Network: Part I - Analytical Diffusion Model, Electrochimica Acta (2020)

Quantitative Relationships Between Pore Tortuosity, Pore Topology, And Solid Particle Morphology Using a Novel Discrete Particle Size Algorithm, Journal of the Electrochemical Society (2019)

Resolving the Discrepancy in Tortuosity Factor Estimation for Li-Ion Battery Electrodes Through Micro-Macro Modeling and Experiment, Journal of The Electrochemical Society (2018)

Awards and Honors

NREL Director’s Award (2017)