Battery expert and consultant, Dr. Heather Platt got interested in battery chemistry during her undergraduate studies and has been headlong in the battery industry ever since. During this great conversation with Paolo, she reviews the critical history of battery chemistry before discussing its current state. Lithium- vs. sodium-ion battery chemistry, the horizon for solid state batteries, global dynamics of the battery industry, and more is covered. Plus, Heather even shares her vision for the future of the industry. This will be an electrifying conversation, join us!
Strap in for this charged up conversation. Battery chemistry is a topic we’ve touched on before and is one we’ve committed to exploring further in this season. This conversation with Dr. Heather Platt, Co-Founder and Chief Battery Scientist at Platt Engineering Solutions, takes us on an expert-guided tour of battery chemistry.
This conversation quickly moves us through battery chemistries like lead/acid and metal sulfides and into more modern mixed metal oxides with reversible chemistry. Our discussion of the pros and cons of various chemistries, including lithium-ion, touches on complex considerations including power density, voltage, global material sourcing, safety, and more. Manufacturing methods and the micro and nanostructures of battery materials are also discussed.
If you’re excited about the future of the battery field you’ll be sure to enjoy Heather’s views on up-and-coming battery technologies, including solid state and sodium-ion chemistries.
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Heather Platt, PhD 00:05
When you look at grid storage, that's where there's room for all kinds of different possible solutions. Wind and solar generated electricity are cost competitive right now.
Paolo 00:22
Recently on Bringing Chemistry to Life, we shared with our listeners that we'll be focusing on a few main topics over the remaining episodes of season five. First on the list was battery chemistry. And I can't think of a better guest to continue that conversation than Dr. Heather Platt. She’s has worked in the battery industry for over 20 years. And her explanations of the cutting-edge science of today, as well as its evolution into the near future, really opened my eyes to the field’s incredible potential. I am Paolo Braiuca, with Thermo Fisher Scientific, and I'm delighted to have you along for this fascinating conversation. We began by asking Heather about her first experience in battery chemistry, and how it led her to her current work.
Heather Platt, PhD 01:09
I actually got interested in batteries during my undergraduate work. My degrees are in chemistry and I had a chance to do an undergraduate internship at Argonne National Laboratory, and got to build batteries at, you know, 21 years old, and I was hooked at that point. Building batteries is something I enjoy quite a bit. I like being hands on, I like building them. And then it's taken me the last 20 years since then to start to scratch the surface of what the materials are about. That early experience in undergrad, and then graduate work, did a lot of really hardcore synthesis and thinking about and working with other people that were studying materials from different angles. Computational, how do you how do you take the structure and predict properties? And then of course, you have to go make it and measure the properties to see if the prediction is right. So, from there, I had a chance to build solar cells and build batteries, so I've been interested in renewable energy for a long time as well, and then ultimately landed with, with a little startup doing solid state batteries, called Solid Power. Was there for six and a half years, the last couple of years have been consulting and that's been a great opportunity to broaden out to look at lithium-ion batteries, sodium ion batteries, I mentioned solid state, lots of different types of active materials and really targeting a lot of different applications.
Paolo 02:35
So batteries have been around for a long time, right. When you ended up doing your graduate studies into it and being really becoming a professional. I'm sure it was a hot experience. But you know, if a think you're 20 years back, they weren't where they are right now. Were you already envisioning back then that they would become such a big thing and so important for the future of the world really? Was it clear in your head from the from the beginning?
Heather Platt, PhD 03:04
Batteries have been around in different forms for millennia, right. There's the Baghdad Battery if you if you want to go way back into archaeology, and people have been living with lead acid batteries in automobiles for decades. I think it's been very clear for quite a long time that batteries are important. 1991 was a transitional year because that's when Sony commercialized the first lithium-ion battery. And that's when there was a big jump and energy. You can't imagine carrying a phone around attached to a lead acid battery, right, like that's just a non-starter. But once lithium-ion actually became real and was produced in large volumes, that enabled Walkman’s, Discman’s, like, you know, I was, you know, the, the all of the devices we carry now. And so that was incredibly important. I did my that undergraduate research internship in 2001. I remember building batteries in the lab, and then and then going to get my first cell phone and being just so excited that I built something that was now in a device. So I don't know that I would say that I was, had a strong awareness that batteries were going to become as important now, then, but it was it was very clear that it was technology that was enabling a lot of new things.
Paolo 04:23
So what was your, what was your research focus on at the beginning? You know, you say you were building battery. Was it more on the, was there a lot of chemistry in what you were doing and researching? Or was there a way to manufacture the cells? What was your focus?
Heather Platt, PhD 04:40
Absolutely there was chemistry involved. I was making materials and then coating them as electrodes and then putting them into coin cells. And when you talk about chemistry, there are different branches of course. You've got your more organic or biochemistry and then there's the inorganic side of things. So thinking about it from an inorganic perspective you're looking at, with battery materials, you're often looking at materials that have a strong, well established crystal structure. They're typically ceramics. And you need to use different techniques to make ceramic materials than you would use to make more biocentric or polymeric molecules, if you're looking at more of a biological or, or biochemical, and but yeah, tons of chemistry.
Paolo 05:27
How did we end up with that type of material? Was it just by chance because they had some characteristics that were suitable and then the field just developed from there? Or was there, was there an initial screening of materials? I don't quite know the history.
Heather Platt, PhD 05:44
Yeah. I love the question. And I guess I'll open my answer by saying that battery materials tend to be cyclical. So the very first cathodes were actually metal sulfides. And that was a titanium disulfide had kind of a lower voltage. And what was really important about that those metal sulfides is that you could reversibly get ions in and out. Again, looking at lead acid, this is a chemistry that has worked well for batteries for a long time, it's reliable, it's generally safe, as long as you don't drink the acid, right? And so lithium-ion really became about finding the right material that where you could reversibly get lithium ions in and then get them back out. And so these sulfides were the first class that were that was really discovered. And then from there, someone worked out that lithium cobalt oxide worked in the same fashion. And when I say get stuff in and out reversibly, I'm talking about being able to do it hundreds of times. And that's I think what people were really looking for, to commercialize a higher energy chemistry. At this point, in the lithium-ion space, there are two main cathode materials that are in production today. One is lithium iron phosphate; you'll hear that referred to as LFP. And then the other is as either a nickel manganese cobalt, or a nickel cobalt aluminum oxide. They are, but they're pretty similar in terms of being higher energy. So LFP, a little bit lower energy, but really cheap, because it's iron. And then the nickel containing compounds are higher energy, but they tend to be more expensive, because you have to source cobalt in particular. Nickel is a little bit of a price point barrier as well.
Paolo 07:29
How do you make these materials? I'm assuming you need to have a reliable manufacturing technique that controls the micro or even nano structures of the material you get, but you need, you need scale at the same time?
Heather Platt, PhD 07:43
When you're talking about chemical synthesis, you're looking at a lot of the same approaches, right? When do you dissolve something? When do you dry to remove the solvent, you know, things of that nature. And you're absolutely right, that the microstructure and nano structure is really important with NMC in particular, and that's because there's been a big push to higher nickel content in the last, last decade in particular, and that is because you can get a little bit higher voltage out of it. And there's also concerns with cobalt mining, it comes from countries that don't have very high safety standards. What that means is that when you put all that nickel in, you increase the sensitivity to reaction with atmospheric moisture. And so that's where coatings can be really important. The way you make materials is really important. So typically, it's a with NMC type materials, it's a coprecipitation process. So you're going to dissolve your metal precursors into an appropriate solvent you know, combine them together and you then you're looking to separate your solid precipitate from the liquid that remains. LFP, I believe is similar. I'm not as familiar with how that one is made. But it's not as air sensitive and so what that means is that once you have made it. Again, probably coprecipitation, you can make it with just straight mix, mix the solids, the right solids together, and then heat up after that to drive the formation of the right crystal structure. And I should mention too with the coprecipitation process there's also subsequent heating that is needed because you do need the right ceramic structure and there's almost always some amount of heat involved in getting everything rearranged properly. But once you once you make LFP it's not going to be as reactive with atmosphere so the processing becomes a lot easier when you make a slurry, when you coat electrodes and things like that.
Paolo 09:38
What made it viable? So at some point there are commercial batteries made on LFP these days.
Heather Platt, PhD 09:44
Yeah, LFP commercialization is an interesting, I'll say roller coaster, because there was a company in the U.S. that was actually making pretty good commercial LFP cells in the 2000s, late 2000s, maybe early 2010s. But they were a little bit too early. And they were they were making LFP cells in a period when industry, you know, for vehicles for consumer electronics, etc., was really pushing more towards higher energy, and so the NMC the MCA type chemistries. So that was really the first at least in the U.S., that was really the first LFP that was commercialized. But now there are quite a number of companies that make LFP in the U.S. and in China. And it's really because there are automotive companies that want to produce lower cost vehicles. And if you want lower cost, you can get at it by using a cheaper battery, then you can also get at it by using a battery that's a bit safer. And LFP doesn't go into thermal runaway quite the same way NMC cell does, there's some nuances to the chemistry. So if you have a safer battery, then you don't have to do the same vehicle level safety engineering things to incorporate it, so you save money in two ways.
Paolo 11:00
Is this something that is here to stay? Or is it like a moment and you know, the inefficiency is making it too limited?
Heather Platt, PhD 11:11
Great question. I don't think LFP is going anywhere in the next five years for sure. And I wouldn't be surprised if it is still a factor in the marketplace beyond that. But it will be very interesting to see how sodium-ion in particular play a role. And that is in part because sodium has similar, you know, better safety, and it's even cheaper than LFP. At the moment, the biggest drawback with sodium is that it's significantly lower energy. So a good LFP cell is probably going to be about 160-Watt hours per kilogram. And sodium ion cells tend to be about 110 to 120. So you're looking at what at 30% lower energy and so you have to be quite a bit cheaper to make that viable. So it's that's not the case right now. But it will be very interesting to see over the next five and definitely over the next 10 years, if sodium energy can come up or if it can be considerably cheaper than LFP. And if that might enable companies producing sodium batteries to take some of that market share from LFP.
Paolo 12:16
So, when you see, when you manufacture and synthesize these active materials, do you have the active ion in it? So do you do it with the, with lithium present? Or are they lithiated afterwards? Or in this case sodiated, I will say, I don't know if that is a term?
Heather Platt, PhD 12:32
Yep. Yep. You've got it.
Paolo 12:34
Is it Is this the way is, you know, because obviously, as you say, you need to take the size of the ions into account to create the right type of cavities and then need to be able to let the ion go out and back in right? Can you achieve that without the ion present?
Heather Platt, PhD 12:52
I'll actually kind of flip the cell around and talk about the anode for a minute to answer your question. The anode for a lithium-ion battery, whether it's an NCA NMC type battery, or an LFP type battery is graphite. And you generally do not want to try to pre-lithiate graphite, it's there's lots of ways to make graphite itself. And it's pretty low cost and you can process it in water. And I mean, there's just there's a lot of benefits to just working with graphite for the anode. And so what that means is that when you assemble the full cell, the cathode has to have the lithium in it or, and I'll touch on sodium here in a second. So yes, the cathodes are typically synthesized with lithium present. And that is because you're pairing it with graphite that doesn't have lithium in it. For sodium, it's a very similar story, the typical anode is hard carbon instead of graphite, and that is because of the difference in the size of the ions. Again, sodium is bigger than lithium, and it just needs a little bit of a different carbon structure to get in and out reversibly. Sodium cathodes would also be ideally synthesized with the sodium in them.
Paolo 14:02
Are some of the cathodic material water sensitive because of their, you know? They’re transition methods, right? I'm assuming they don't like oxygen. You said, I know that they are not air stable necessarily, right? So is there the, do you have that problem when you assemble you know the cell because you know, there might be water in your graphite in some way?
Heather Platt, PhD 14:24
Yeah, drying is really important for sure. LFP can tolerate water and in fact, I'm not sure about commercially but I know that there are plenty of academic papers that look at processing LFP from an aqueous slurry. So LFP doesn't care. It's a it's a nice stable phosphate. You if you think about rust, right, that's iron oxide. Iron phosphates are similarly very stable once you make them. NMC it is a big deal. And it's not so much the NMC reacts with oxygen. It's more that it will react with atmospheric moisture and potentially carbon dioxide. And so what you got are carbonates and hydroxides. Metal hydroxides, nickel hydroxide, nickel carbonate on the surface of your NMC particles. And those tend to be electrically insulating, but they also are typically ionically insulating. So it's going to really hurt your ability to get lithium ions in and out, and also your ability to get electrons in and out of those particles. So NMC is generally not processed in water for sure. But it's also typically handled in a dry room. So, in an environment that's got a deliberately removing water.
Paolo 15:39
Yeah. That makes total sense. And if you took, to cap this phase of the discussion on the manufacturing element of the parts of the materials is, if you look back at when you were doing it and based on what you know about the current technology, how much of an evolution in the way we make and handle the material, these materials you have seen? And what have been some of the most significant changes, in your opinion, that was well, I don't know, particularly significant if, if any? Or maybe it's a very stable area, and there hasn't been any real breakthrough. And I just simply don't know. But I'm curious?
Heather Platt, PhD 16:15
I would say it's kind of an open question. And the reason that I say that is that lithium-ion, the current approach that we've been talking about, was first commercialized in 1991. And there have been just so many incremental improvements made in the way that the materials are synthesized and processed and put into cells and how the cells are handled. It's really phenomenal. But at this point, there are also what would be significant breakthroughs. So solid state, as an example. I think solid state could be transformative from a production standpoint. Beyond that, though, I really do think that the industry is continuing to make some of the same incremental improvements that have been the case over the last decades. So lithium ion is approaching performance limits, but I think there's still some more things that can be done with the current configurations.
Paolo 16:15
We hope you're enjoying this episode of Bringing Chemistry to Life. As we are speaking about battery chemistry, I just want to take the opportunity to remind you that Thermo Fisher Scientific offers an extensive portfolio of chemicals suitable for the development and synthesis of active battery materials. Check that out on thermofisher.com/chemicals. And now back to our conversation.
Paolo 17:42
You started speaking about solid phase and I have so many questions that I'm really curious. Do you mind if we go there? I've spoken to some, you know, and I would include myself in these in this bunch, you know, chemists, even chemists struggle with this idea of a solid electrolyte, right? Because the way you're taught electrolytes is, you know, solids dissolved in a liquid solvent. And I know you know, we speak about solid phase, solid electrolytes, but there's a number of different materials. You know, can we speak about their chemistry? And can you explain to me why they're called solid electrolytes?
Heather Platt, PhD 18:17
Sure. I think I think you’ve; you've framed the question really well. So thank you for that. Solid electrolytes tend to fall into two different camps. One is a more polymeric type, which is closer to the classic liquid electrolyte where you have your, your cations, your anions dissolved in solution, and they've got their solvation spheres, right. And then, you know, they're moving around in response to changes in polarity of the cell. And you know what's going on with the electrodes. So with a polymer type solid electrolyte, you are potentially dealing with a lot of the same challenges that you would get with a liquid electrolyte, but you can have less flammable solvents around. So there can be some safety advantages, but it's, it's an open question, because you do still need some amount of solvent around to do enough solvating that then your lithium ions can move through the polymer and it's typically a hopping type of mechanism. So they're there are sites along the polymer that that the lithium ions can move on and then of course, you have your anions moving too.
Heather Platt, PhD 18:26
What kind of polymers are those usually? Are they organic stuff?
Heather Platt, PhD 18:35
Oh, yeah. Yeah. PEO, polyethylene oxide is kind of the classic. Some folks have looked at Polyacrylonitrile. So you will typically have some sort of a hetero atom in your carbon chain. So nitrogen oxygen, I think some people have looked a little bit at sulfur, but those are not, may not be quite as low cost. Yeah, typically just need a hetero atom and you need them frequently enough that you can get you know when you have your polymer chain moving around, you know your lithium ions can hop from one hetero atom to the next. Um, the other type of solid electrolytes are the ceramics or glass ceramics. And at that point, you don't have significant amounts of polymers around. And so you're thinking about, I'll use a playground analogy. So a lot of playgrounds will have structures of various sorts that kids can crawl through, right. And so with the ceramics or the glass ceramics, you need enough of these sorts of channels through your solid that lithium ions can just kind of go shooting straight through. So maybe, maybe let's, let's use the analogy of a slide in a playground structure. So if you get it right, and you have enough of these slides, going through your ceramic, then lithium ions have lots of places to go and they can move very easily. And there's a significant benefit to that, because lithium is going to move selectively. You're not going to have the anions moving around, because they're fixed in your solid structure. What's tricky and has taken some number of decades to work out is what specific structures have enough of these, these channels, or these slides, to get the same level of ionic conductivity that you can get with a liquid electrolyte. So for a lot of years, it was okay, you've got the solid electrolyte that gives you .01 millisiemen per centimeter, where a liquid electrolyte would give you 10 millisiemen per centimeter. So when you've got that many orders of magnitude lower conductivity, it's just not feasible to make that something commercially viable. Yeah, just within the last 10 years, there, there have been some specific structures discovered in the oxide space, as well as in the sulfide space, where you can get, if not quite, necessarily 10 millisiemen per centimeter, like you get in a liquid electrolyte, you can at least get into the you know, the one to five range. So you're starting to get high enough that you could conceivably build some interesting batteries that way.
Paolo 21:54
So how are these made? Because I'm assuming when you make a ceramic material does this need to be like a contiguous single piece of material and it goes into the cell. So I assume if you fracture and you start having voids in there, right. And as potentially, besides the mechanical instability, I'm guessing you lose stuff in terms of conductivity and performance, but perhaps even safety with a shorter battery? I don't know. But you know, and I don't think ceramics are fluid at any phase of their synthesis, are they? I just started to envision. Sorry, I'm such a newbie, I should know more about it.
Heather Platt, PhD 22:32
No, you understand ceramic processing very well. And that's a legitimate question. So it depends on the class of materials. And what I mean by that is that the sulfides are actually cold compressible. And so what that means is that you can handle them in the same fashion that you can, the NMC, NCA, LFP cathodes, and in the graphite or hard carbon anodes. So you can use binders, you can make slurries. And so you put this layer down that's composed of particles, and then you can calendar it and it's in calendaring, it that you get the level of contact that you were you were alluding to, that you have to have with ceramic particles. So that is a pretty critical property of the ceramics. The oxides are a little bit trickier. Because you have, they're not cold compressible. So what that means is that you need some amount of temperature, typically 800 degrees Celsius or hotter, to get your one particle to sinter together to have enough contact with the particle next to it to get the appropriate ionic conductivity. So that does make processing with the oxides more challenging. And it's really, really primarily about high temperature step. So, you know, I was with Solid Power which is a company that's developing the sulfides. And so I do have a little bit of a bias, I will acknowledge that. But then, yeah, but there are there are some fundamental material properties that make the oxide more challenging.
Paolo 23:53
Something that links technology and industry, you know, from a perspective, you know, looking at where we are in the landscape of materials and ideas around the batteries. Is there any real innovation or something even blue sky thinking at the horizon that excites you? Or is this a mature market from the technology perspective, you know, and there will have incremental improvements over the, you know, the materials that we have already in hands?
Heather Platt, PhD 24:25
One of the things that makes batteries so interesting to work on is that particular applications need different things and so as a result, use different batteries. You're probably never going to replace a lead acid starter battery in a car with a lithium ion. The lead acid works really well. And at least in a in an internal combustion vehicle, you're not going to replace a lead acid battery with a lithium-ion battery to start the car. And then you know, we've talked about personal electronics to lithium-ion works really well for that. But when you look at grid storage, that's where there's room for all kinds of different possible solutions. And the reason that I get really excited about that is because wind and solar generated electricity are cost competitive right now in the U.S. for sure. I'm not as familiar with Europe, but I know Europe has been pushing for renewables much longer than the U.S. has. So renewables are here, you know, we're able to make electricity, but we need to store it. And because of the push in Europe and the more recent push in the U.S. in that direction, we are going to need a lot of capacity. And some of the some of the models that I've seen are projecting that there's just not enough battery manufacturing that's been announced relative to the need for grid storage. So what that means is that there are opportunities potentially for flow batteries. Opportunities for maybe molten salt type batteries,. Opportunities for other chemistries, like we're just not going to be able to make enough LFP cells as low cost as they are to meet all of the grid storage that we need. So yeah, I think flow batteries are super interesting. And then yeah, other kinetic type storage, which is not an area I know a lot about, but those are approaches that are being explored and commercialized for the grid. So super interesting and a lot more diversity, I think in solutions, battery storage solutions, as well as other energy storage solutions for grid just because we need so much of it. There's no one technology that's going to do it.
Paolo 26:29
What is, right now, you know, you mentioned and probably are going to go back to the solid phase, right, but what is the biggest hurdle from the chemistry perspective, or from the manufacturing perspective that, you know, needs to be overcome to just to open the gates to, you know, a flood of some of these new exciting technologies that we discussed? What if you have to pick like one or two major hurdles to remove?
Heather Platt, PhD 26:57
I touched on the formation piece of the manufacturing process earlier. So yes, solid state can address that. That's huge. But I think inherently batteries are kinetic in nature. And what that means is that the way they perform is dependent on how they have been handled. And so what I think will be interesting, too, is to see how the secondary market develops. So there are some companies that are working to use data analytics to tag and track cells and battery packs. So let's say your pack comes out of the vehicle, well, there's probably still usable life in it. You can think about a grid storage, maybe like a home system, I've seen some more creative approaches as well. And so I think it's going to be really interesting to see if the secondary market can really get significant value out of batteries that have been used for another application and then repurpose them for something else. That would be pretty transformative, I think. Because as of right now, it's, you know, the batteries are, we're using batteries as fast as we can, and there just aren't a lot of them that are that are coming out of use. But there will be, because we're making and deploying so many. So I think watching the second use market is going to be really interesting.
Paolo 28:11
That's an interesting perspective and some for something I haven't heard before. So thanks, that's, that's made me think that's really good. Fast forward 20 or 25 years, you know, what would I be sitting on? Will it be like will my car have sodium battery? Will there be any disruptive new active material that we don't even know right now, you know? What does the future look like in your mind?
Heather Platt, PhD 28:37
As in all things, when people are innovating and developing new technology, there's always a bias towards what's already known. I'd say you know, 20 years down the road, I would expect there to be you know, a low-cost type battery, either a sodium or an LFP type battery for vehicles, or, you know, a higher energy more performance type pack for vehicles, and that I would expect to be solid state. Yeah, I think in 20 years, most homes are going to have some amount of energy storage built in. And they'll have you know, solar panels, unless it's a part of the world is just hopelessly cloudy or has, you know, very short days, for a lot of the year, I would expect there to be a battery chemistry, whether it's sodium, whether it's LFP, maybe something emerging. There are some companies that are doing flow battery systems that they think they can make competitive at small scale. So I would expect, I would expect most homes to have some amount of storage and solar. I would also expect transmission lines, and this is a big thing with grid scale electricity in the U.S. like transmission lines or add a significant amount of the cost to for utility and they also introduce a lot of risks. So I live in Colorado. We had some rolling blackouts a couple of weeks ago because it was very dry and it was very windy and the utility was concerned about sparking a wildfire. So I didn't have power in my house for about 18 hours. In order to get away from the risk of being sued for sparking a wildfire, in the U.S. I understand things a little different in Europe. But I think utilities are going to move away from these big transmission lines, and they're going to move towards more localized storage, they're going to try to put it closer to cities then what they're able to do right now, just because there isn't really a grid storage technology that's safe enough, but I think in 20 years, there will be.
Heather Platt, PhD 28:46
Hey, this is recorded. Now I'm going to, I'm going to put a reminder in my calendar in 25 years and re-listen to it. And I'll see, and I'll let you know.
Heather Platt, PhD 30:36
Sounds good.
Paolo 30:37
Whether you're a spot on, I'm sure.
Heather Platt, PhD 30:39
I'm sure it won't be, but.
Paolo 30:42
It's quite an exciting scenario you've described. So I hope you're right. I hope you're right. Heather, we always close our interviews with the same question. Right, you know, you are an expert in your field, you've been you've seen things, still working on a lot of exciting projects. But you know, you're in a good position to provide some advice to somebody who's just starting their scientific or scientifically-related career. You know, what would that one piece of advice be? Or even two if you feel generous?
Heather Platt, PhD 31:18
I'll do maybe two part one. One piece of advice and that's to expect roadblocks and expect things to not work. And to, in those moments, ask yourself, first of all, is what you're trying to do really worth doing? Whether it's technically in the lab, you're working on this problem and the way the way you thought you'd be able to solve the problem just isn't working. Well, is that problem still really one you want to solve? And if the answer is yes, then how else can you approach it? Turn it around, put it down for a bit, come back to it. But just be prepared for things to not work. And be prepared to come up with other ways to approach solving that technical problem or going after the sort of job that you think will get you the next step in the direction that you want to go. Also, use those roadblocks as an opportunity to pivot if needed. You may think you want to head in a direction and you get a you get a no that you weren't expecting and take a minute and say, “Okay, again, is this the direction I want to go? If not, how can I pivot from this?” Because everything that you learn, every problem you work on, is going to help you build skills. And those skills can be used in a variety of areas. So yeah, expect the roadblocks and use them as an opportunity to try something different.
Paolo 32:47
That was Dr. Heather Platt, co-founder and Chief Battery Scientist at Platt Engineering Solutions in Colorado. If you enjoyed this conversation, you're sure to enjoy Dr. Platt's book, video, podcasts and other content recommendations. Look in the Episode Notes for a URL where you can access these recommendations and register for a free Bringing Chemistry to Life t-shirt. This episode was produced by Sarah Briganti, Matt Ferris, and Matthew Stock.