Today the MIT News Office has released a story on my phase-field modeling of lithium iron phosphate nanoparticles (LiFePO4), a popular battery material:

Revealing how a battery material works: MIT team uncovers a reason why the hottest new material for rechargeable batteries works so well.

The research appears in papers that we published recently in Nano Letters and ACS Nano. With a combination of analytical analysis and computer simulation, we were able to explain many of the observed properties of LiFePO4 nanoparticles, and offered an explanation for why it is such a good battery material. We came to some interesting realizations about temperature and the interactions between nanoparticles that I hope will encourage experimental investigation and lead to better performing, longer lasting batteries.