Lytle Research Group
Undergraduate researchers in the Lytle group fabricate and test electrode materials for batteries, capacitors, and sensors. We electrochemically characterize the performance of these materials in order to improve the rate that they store energy and the detection limit for sensing small molecules.
Each summer, 2-3 undergraduate students work in the Lytle Lab for 5-10 weeks. They learn to prepare carbon electrodes by sol-gel or vapor deposition routes, and then to functionalize these with nanoscopic quantities of transition metals and metal oxides. Students learn how to assemble these electrodes in three-electrode cell configurations and then to measure their electrochemical behavior using a wide range of electroanalytical methods, including cyclic voltammetry, differential pulsed voltammetry, and impedance spectroscopy. Students learn to characterize their samples using visible-light microscopy, SEM, EDS, TEM, and XRD.
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