By Canadian Press

Halifax professor wins top science prize for world-leading battery research

Feb 7, 2017 | 7:15 AM

HALIFAX — A Halifax professor who has partnered with Tesla to make better lithium-ion batteries — and, he hopes, help mitigate climate change — has won Canada’s top science award.

Dr. Jeff Dahn of Dalhousie University was to receive the $1-million Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering on Tuesday evening in Ottawa.

Dahn’s pioneering work on lithium and lithium-ion batteries since 1978 helped develop the batteries that have made mobile devices part of our everyday lives.

Last summer, he began a five-year research partnership with Tesla Motors, the California electric car company headed by CEO Elon Musk.

Tesla is also keenly interested in energy storage for solar and wind, and Dahn said addressing climate change is a “big motivator” for him.

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Solar and wind energy will wean us of our fossil fuel habit, and improved energy storage is the missing link, he said.

“Unfortunately they’re not always there, so when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, you have to store, so in the night and in the calm you have electricity available,” he said.

Tesla has set up a six-person lab in neighbouring Dartmouth so it could work with Dahn’s 25-member team across the harbour at Dalhousie.

“That was established so that Tesla would have a presence in Nova Scotia and could have more sort of proprietary research going on that was still making use of some our facilities,” Dahn said.

Dahn said he has no financial interest in the research — nor in the two battery-related companies that have already been spun off from his Dalhousie lab.

“I’ve learned a man has to live within his limitations, I think that’s a Clint Eastwood quote from one of his movies,” he said. “I like to think about the science and get involved in the experiments and talk with the students about their results. That’s what I love. Anything business-related, I’ve learned that’s not for me.”

Tesla is taking the financial risk on research in his lab that may lead nowhere, he said. Dahn hasn’t met Musk, but said he has interacted fairly often with Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, the company’s chief technical officer. 

Dahn and his team previously developed a high-precision test that could accurately determine battery lifespan in weeks, rather than decades.

His career has focused on finding novel materials to meet increasing demand for the batteries, while improving production, storage and sustainability.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, which awards the Herzberg prize, says Dahn performed fundamental studies on all of the materials used in lithium-ion batteries, and helped invent some of the positive-electrode materials used in lithium-ion cells for power tools, grid energy storage and electric vehicles.

Dahn, 60, was born in Bridgeport, Conn., and moved to Nova Scotia in 1970 with his family.

He said he hopes to use the Herzberg money to establish a research chair at Dalhousie after he retires.

The university says it is the third time in four years that a Dalhousie researcher has won the Herzberg prize.

Dahn also won the Governor General’s Innovation Award last year.

Rob Roberts, The Canadian Press