From electric cars and smart watches to portable hedge trimmers and pacemakers, lithium-ion batteries power the modern world, literally. But these ubiquitous rechargeable batteries have a major drawback: Volatile liquid electrolytes inside them can explode or catch fire if they’re damaged or if they overheat.

Dylan Barber, who joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering as an assistant professor in August 2025, is developing new types of highly conductive polymers that could replace the liquids and serve as solid-state electrolytes—leading to safer, more powerful battery technologies. His polymers also have applications in energy storage, soft robotics and medicine.

Barber studied chemistry at Williams College before earning his PhD in polymer science and engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. There, he focused on fundamental challenges in monomer and polymer synthesis and the mechanics of flexible filaments.

Since 2021, Barber has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard, designing optimally efficient 3D-printed polymer electrodes for redox flow batteries, an emerging large-scale energy storage technology, as well as polymers for soft robotics.

In particular, he has developed a method for synthesizing a room-temperature liquid from zwitterions, special molecules with both a positive and negative charge. He has also succeeded in making soft, functional materials from that liquid.

At UW–Madison, Barber plans to continue to design, synthesize and test new polymer materials for solid-state electrolytes in next-generation lithium and sodium batteries.

He also plans to develop his zwitterionic materials for biomedical applications. “Soft robotics have direct value in a lot of medical technologies, like wearable exosuits, haptics, or devices that can massage your limbs to increase blood flow,” he says.

But few of those technologies have made it to market. That’s because most of these dielectric elastomer actuators, soft devices that contract under an applied voltage, demand enormous voltages to work. “They’re totally impractical to wear on the body, because you need a kilovolt or 10 kilovolts to get useful energy densities,” says Barber.

One of his goals is to design soft polymers with large dielectric constants, meaning they require a much lower voltage to activate. “The materials we are developing are going to unlock some really interesting biomedical applications and robotics that have been previously accessible,” he says.

UW–Madison is a great fit for his work, Barber says, because of its clusters of battery and polymer science researchers. “There are so many brilliant people doing excellent polymer science inside and outside the College of Engineering,” he says. “I want to collaborate with, learn from, and be a part of that community.”

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Originally published: September 3, 2025
Source: College of Engineering News
Author: Jason Daley

This article was first published on the College of Engineering news page and is reposted here with permission.