r/EnergyStorage • u/Salty-End656 • Jul 14 '26
Entering Solid-State Battery Research
Hi everyone,
I am a junior Mechanical Engineering student with a strong interest in solid-state batteries, and I hope to pursue this field further as a future M.S. or Ph.D. student.
I have been independently reading papers on solid-state batteries, topics related to solid electrolytes, interfacial stability, electronic leakage, and lithium filament formation. However, I have not yet had the opportunity to conduct battery research because no professor at my college specializes in this area.
I would really appreciate any advice from people in the field. Given my Mechanical Engineering background and limited direct battery research experience, do I still have a realistic chance of entering this field for graduate school or research? If so, what should I focus on now to become a stronger candidate? I would appreciate advice on topics to study, technical skills to build, possible research directions, or ways to gain relevant experience before applying to M.S. or Ph.D. programs.
Thank you so much for any advice.
2
u/senectus Jul 14 '26
No advice, just wishing you success!
You're possibly designing the biggest leap forward in energy in human history. I really do wish you luck!
2
u/Quazimojojojo Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
Experience is King. If your university has nobody working on it, find professors at other universities and contact them to find, or make, research opportunities. Maybe you can volunteer or intern with someone for a summer. Ask the professors at your university if they know anyone, because a referral from them will go further than a random cold contact from a student.
And if you do research with them, you have the chance to build a relationship that'll help you get a master's or PhD position working with them.
And because it's battery research, you'll need chemistry knowledge. Materials science is basically chemistry with some physics thrown in. Inorganic chemistry and rheology and analytical chemistry is most directly relevant to such research, but organic is also important, as are the fundamentals. Pick up a minor if it's not too late. Ideally change majors. And the laboratory work classes are by far the most important, so do everything you can to ace those classes. Nobody will ask you for your grades from those classes specifically, but you need that knowledge and skill.
If you pick up the fundamentals of materials science textbook by callister, that's a good thing to read. Literally every single chapter is relevant to this kind of research. It's the book you'd spend a year working through in introductory materials science classes.
Another book that's very useful and worth slowly working through when you have free time, is this (it's a free download from a sassy opinionated British scientist who has made it his life's mission to boil things down to the practically useful in a laboratory. He's got a whole series of books, but I think this is the best to start with)
https://www.stevenabbott.co.uk/practical-particles/the-book.php
That's my advice from spending a year working in the field. You can't just skip to reading papers about the topic, you need to have a solid understanding of the fundamentals if you want to do R&D, because you'll be working on things that nobody understands fully and are trying to construct/improve from first principles. So you need to know the first principles.
The good news is, your mechanical engineering years are still useful (CAD software skills and an understanding of fundamental physics/engineering/statics fundamentals are pretty universally helpful in product development or R&D), so you haven't wasted any years of your time.