Date of Award

Spring 2026

Document Type

Thesis

Terms of Use

© 2026 Shintaro Inaba. This work is freely available courtesy of the author. It may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. For all other uses, please contact the copyright holder.

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Physics & Astronomy Department

First Advisor

Hillary L. Smith

Abstract

Batteries allow storage of chemical energy and controlled conversion of energy as electricity. Known to mankind since the eighteenth century, batteries have been vital in manufacturing, service industry, and use of portable electronics and electric vehicles. These systems utilize rechargeable batteries, where redox reactions are practically reversible. Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) and sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are two rechargeable systems that are widely explored in the field of electrochemistry and electrical engineering due to their abundance of materials, relative safety, energy density and power density. Discovery and optimization of those battery materials are crucial in improving their performance and accelerating commercialization. In this thesis, I present three independent studies on LIB and SIB materials. The first section is a performance analysis on five rechargeable Li-ion coin cells at various temperatures. The study evaluated long-term cycling, and electrode composition and cell degradation mechanisms were deduced using non destructive methods. The second study focuses on a SIB cathode candidate, sodium hexacyanoferrate NaxFe[Fe(CN)6], a complex within the family of Prussian Blue Analogue. The synthesis conditions were systematically optimized to control sodium concentration and crystallite size. Preliminary ab initio calculations for the desodiated state are presented. In the third study, sodium iron phosphate NaxFePO4, a SIB cathode candidate, was evaluated both experimentally and computationally. Both Mössbauer spectroscopy and inelastic neutron scattering were employed, and experimental spectra were validated against first-principles calculations. The goal of these three studies was to contribute to the advancement of battery materials development, and ultimately towards global energy security.

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