Dr. Rob Armstrong

Principal Research Fellow

Rob has been involved in battery research since he moved to St Andrews in 1994. Among over 130 publications, he has published several landmark papers in Li-ion and Na-ion battery research (h-index 50). These have included the first report of layered LiMnO2 (published in Nature and with >1300 citations), several publications on TiO2(B) nanomaterials as anode materials and the first observation of oxygen evolution in Li-rich layered cathode materials. More recently work on iron oxalates has revealed the possibility of anion redox behaviour in polyanionic systems for the first time.
Since 2019 he has been joint project lead on the Faraday Institution project NEXGENNA, developing next generation sodium-ion batteries, and leads the work package devoted to cathode materials. A roadmap article on sodium-ion batteries edited by Rob and Nuria Tapia Ruiz is the most downloaded article from J. Phys. Energy.
He is a member of the Alistore European Research Institute devoted to advanced batteries and as a result, he has active collaborations with a number of leading European laboratories. He is the St Andrews representative on the Alistore scientific council.
His research is concerned with the synthesis and characterisation of novel electrode materials for lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries. There is particular emphasis in correlating structure and properties using powder X-ray and neutron diffraction, XAS and Raman spectroscopy combined with electrochemical studies. His current interests include developing new layered and polyanionic cathode materials and organic negative electrodes.