https://canada.autonews.com/electric-vehicles/how-nova-scotias-jeff-dahn-became-battery-big-shot

How Nova Scotia's Jeff Dahn became a battery big shot

Jeff Dahn’s reputation has attracted brainpower to his Dalhousie University research lab, and, since 2016, funding from Tesla.

No one can accuse Jeff Dahn of false modesty.

Ask how Dalhousie University in Halifax, off the beaten track of Canada’s automotive sector, has become a hub for research into battery technology for electric vehicles, and Dahn offers a candid reply.

“I don’t want to brag, but it really has to do with me,” he told Automotive News Canada.

Dahn, 64, has devoted his career to developing lithium-ion batteries, becoming one of the world’s foremost authorities.

It has culminated in the creation of Dahn’s influential research lab, endowed with millions in funding over the past 25 years. In May, it received an additional $6 million through its existing partnership with electric-vehicle automaker Tesla and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

Dahn, an alumnus of Dalhousie, earned his physics doctorate at the University of British Columbia and worked at Moli Energy Corp., a UBC spinoff venture. There he helped pioneer the first commercial rechargeable lithium-ion cell. Dahn later became Moli’s research director and also taught at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.

Since returning to Dalhousie in the mid-1990s, Dahn has become a magnet for talented researchers and attracted funding from INSERC, 3M Corp. and, since 2016, Tesla.

Young scientists who have worked with Dahn have gone on to academic careers or started related companies in the Halifax area.

“Just the whole ecosystem has grown,” Dahn said. “But if I had never come here, nothing would have happened.”

The impact on Dalhousie has been enormous, raising its profile internationally and drawing talent and investment to startups it fosters, said Alice Aiken, the university’s vice-president of research and innovation.

‘EXTRAORDINARY HUB’

“We do have the only university partnership in the world with Tesla,” Aiken said.

Dahn views battery development as part of building a cleaner, greener society, Aiken said. The work has influenced other disciplines at the school, everything from solar and hydrogen energy generation, precision agriculture and clean-water technology to indigenous health.

“It’s sort of really mushroomed across all of our faculties at the university from this extraordinary hub that Jeff has created,” Aiken said.

Dahn’s lengthy title is NSERC/ Tesla Canada Inc. industrial research chair, Canada research chair in materials for advanced batteries. He heads a lab of 20 to 30 scientists and staff, which he expects will grow.

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The pandemic forced the lab to shut down for almost two months last spring, but Dahn’s team was back by June as Nova Scotia quashed the first wave.

“We were working at home,” he said. “But for experimental scientists, it’s difficult to do a lot at home, so we’ve been very fortunate that way.”

The specifics of Dahn’s research are confidential to protect Tesla’s intellectual property, he said. The aim is to develop a battery that combines a long life span, both chronologically and in charge-discharge cycles; high energy density or power storage; safe operation; and low cost.

“Those are the four things that really matter, and those are the four things we focus on,” Dahn said.

The difficultly is balance. Increasing energy density can shorten the cell’s life span or affect safety or cost.

And cost is subject to price swings in raw materials such as graphite and nickel, Dahn said.

“Eventually, if the cost were to be zero, everybody would be happy. So getting to zero is the hardest thing.”

Why don’t automakers collaborate to develop one battery technology they can all use?

“What you’re saying resonates well with me,” Dahn said, “but it’s just not the way that companies work.”

Not everything Dahn’s team does stays under wraps. While Tesla owns intellectual property produced by the lab, its researchers are allowed to publish their findings once patents are filed.

“That’s really important,” Dahn said, “because if the students couldn’t publish their work, they wouldn’t be noticed, and they would never get jobs.”

Dalhousie is not the only focus of Canadian battery research. Dahn noted work being done at the University of Waterloo, Ont., Western University in London, Ont., and the University of Calgary. And Hydro Quebec’s “historically incredibly strong” research effort dates back to the 1980s, he said.

‘WE HAVE EVERYTHING’

Efforts to develop and produce batteries in Canada have accelerated.

“My students are getting job offers when they’re a year away from graduation,” Dahn said. “Some companies are saying, ‘We’ll put you on salary now as long as you’re to come to us when you graduate.’ ”

Canada has the components for a robust battery sector, Dahn said. It has the raw materials and the intellectual resources.

Governments chasing greenhouse-gas goals are motivated to offer incentives to attract production.

“We have everything that’s needed,” Dahn said. “We have the brains, we have the cheap power, we have the raw materials.”

But he’s realistic. Other countries have the same goals. And new companies are sprouting up everywhere, propelled by risk-taking entrepreneurs, who historically are not thick on the ground in Canada.

“We’re not a big country, and to think that we would be pulling above our weight per capita might be a little bit crazy. But at least we should pull at our per-capita weight.” Dahn, who came to Nova Scotia from Connecticut with his family as a teen, said other institutions have tried to lure him away from Dalhousie, but his roots in the province are deep; his siblings and children are all there, he said.

“I will never move.”

>>13980109

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna

During early September, approximately 5,000 experienced Ottoman sappers had repeatedly blown up large portions of the walls between the Burg bastion, the Löbel bastion and the Burg ravelin, creating gaps of about 12 metres (39 ft) in width. The Viennese tried to counter this by digging their own tunnels to intercept the placing of large amounts of gunpowder in caverns. The Ottomans finally managed to occupy the Burg ravelin and the low wall in that area on 8 September. Anticipating a breach in the city walls, the remaining Viennese prepared to fight in the inner city.

Mustafa Pasha launched his counterattacks with most of his force, but held back some of the elite Janissary and Sipahi units for a simultaneous assault on the city. The Ottoman commanders had intended to take Vienna before Sobieski arrived, but time ran out. Their sappers had prepared a large, final detonation under the Löbelbastei to breach the walls. In total, ten mines were set to explode, but they were located by the defenders and disarmed.

The Ottoman troops were tired and dispirited following the failure of the attempt at sapping, the assault on the city and the advance of the Holy League infantry on the Türkenschanze. The cavalry charge was the final deadly blow. Less than three hours after the cavalry attack, the Catholic forces had won the battle and saved Vienna. The first Catholic officer who entered Vienna was Louis William, Margrave of Baden-Baden, at the head of his dragoons. Afterwards Sobieski paraphrased Julius Caesar's famous quotation (Veni, vidi, vici) by saying "Venimus, vidimus, Deus vicit"- "We came, we saw, God conquered".

>>13980148

>https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9723783/Top-general-rejected-Trumps-push-military-crack-skulls-civil-rights-protests.html

'Crack their skulls!': Trump told military to shoot and 'beat the f**k' out of BLM protesters last summer - but Joint Chiefs Chair Milley refused, new book reveals

>>13980222

can someone turn this into English;

High-Q Factor Optical Whispering-Gallery Mode Microresonators and Their Use in Precision Measurements

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11018-015-0639-9

>>13980281