Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Chemistry, Stony Brook University, 2011
  • M.Sc., Chemistry, , 2007
Languages
  • French
  • Spanish

Dr. Lucienne (Lucy) Buannic is a solid-state chemist with expertise in rechargeable batteries. She has over seven years of solid-state battery experience, including product development. Her research interests range from electrolyte materials and their processing to the industrial manufacturing of 40 Ah cells. 

Dr. Buannic is also well versed in materials characterization, rechargeable battery design, and performance assessment. She has explored chemistries spanning from lithium ion, sodium ion, lead acid, to emerging water-based systems.

Dr. Buannic has extensive experience in evaluating electrochemical systems, inorganic materials, and batteries using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and galvanostatic cycling. She has performed failure analyses and quality assessments using scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDS) and computed tomography (CT) X-ray scanning on batteries ranging in application from consumer electronics to power tools. Dr. Buannic is knowledgeable in thermal analysis including thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and accelerating rate calorimetry (ARC). She is also experienced in X-ray diffraction (XRD), gas-chromatography coupled to a thermal conductivity detector (GC-TCD), and inductively coupled plasma (ICP) analyses.

Prior to joining Exponent, Dr. Buannic was investigating a new aqueous-based rechargeable battery technology as a Senior Scientist at Everon24. She contributed to the development of an aqueous battery chemistry by identifying electrochemical metal oxide deposition and unwanted side-reactions such as anion reduction and hydrogen evolution reaction. Dr. Buannic also held tenure as a Senior Research Scientist at A123 Systems, scaling up a lithium-based solid-state battery technology, overseeing the electrode mixing and coating, cell assembly, testing, and evaluating cells for safety. Her prior academic appointments include Associate Researcher at the CIC Energigune (Spain), visiting scholar at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and post-doctoral researcher at the Center of Atomic and Alternative Energies (CEA, France). During this time, she synthesized, characterized, and optimized lithium ion conducting solid electrolytes such as the garnet Li7La3Zr2O12 and PEO-based composites of the former. She evaluated ceramic processing techniques including freeze casting and thermoreversible gel casting as potential routes for the industrial development of garnet based solid-state batteries. She investigated sodium based solid-state batteries and the failure mechanisms of lead acid batteries. Dr. Buannic's graduate research was focused on the characterization of proton and oxygen conducting solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) electrolytes, BaZrO3 and BaSnO3, using solid state nuclear magnetic resonance (ssNMR) at SUNY Stony Brook with Professor Clare Grey.