Lopez Receives ECS Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship
Professor Jeffrey Lopez will aim to develop new polymer binders that stabilize high-capacity iron fluoride conversion cathodes, which typically fail due to repeated expansion and contraction during cycling
Northwestern Engineering’s Jeffrey Lopez is one of five recipients of a 2025-26 Electrochemical Society (ECS) Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship for innovative projects in green energy technology.
Lopez, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering, uses insight gained from the study of charge transport processes and reactions at electrochemical interfaces to inform the design of new materials for energy storage applications.
Through his project “Binder Engineering for Stable Cycling of Conversion Cathode Materials” Lopez is aiming to develop new polymer binders that stabilize high-capacity iron fluoride conversion cathodes, which typically fail due to repeated expansion and contraction during cycling. By tailoring functional group chemistry and polymer architecture, the work seeks to enable high-performance batteries without relying on critical minerals like cobalt and nickel, strengthening US supply chain resilience and leadership in next-generation energy storage.
The fellowship program is a partnership between the ECS and the Toyota Research Institute of North America, a division of Toyota Motor North America R&D. Through the fellowships, ECS and Toyota promote innovative and unconventional green energy technologies born from electrochemical research—and encourage young professionals and scholars to pursue battery and fuel cell research.