Jodie L. Lutkenhaus

Jodie L. Lutkenhaus is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University. She develops redox active polymers for energy storage and smart coatings. In 2019 Lutkenhaus and Karen L. Wooley demonstrated the world's first biodegradable peptide battery. She is a World Economic Forum Young Scientist.

Lutkenhaus was inspired to study engineering by her family. Her mother studied chemistry and her father studied physics. She studied chemical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and graduated in 2002. She moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for her doctoral degree, which she finished in 2007. After earning her doctorate under the supervision of Paula T. Hammond Lutkenhaus moved to the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 2008 Lutkenhaus joined the faculty at Yale University.

Lutkenhaus joined the faculty at Texas A&M University in 2010, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2015. She develops new materials for energy storage and smart coatings, including polyelectrolytes and redox active polymers. She looks to develop soft and flexible power supplies for wearable electronics that are durable, sustainable and efficient.

A challenge with using polymers in batteries is that typically polymers are not good at storing and exchanging electrons. Lutkenhaus has demonstrated that organic radical polymers are electrochemically active; allowing for fast charge transfer during redox reactions. If used in portable electronic devices, organic radical polymers could enable fast charging. Lutkenhaus has characterised the speed of charge transfer in these systems using an electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance. Lutkenhaus hopes that future batteries will be metal-free, organic and recyclable.At present, only 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled. Lutkenhaus and Wooley demonstrated that glutamic acid could be used to make batteries – the first fully biodegradable protein battery. The peptides contain redox-active compounds, the stable radical Tempo on the cathode and bipyridine viologen on the anodes.

Lutkenhaus has studied how polymer films behave when they deposited in confined spaces. She is developing two-dimensional transition metal-carbon nanosheets (MXenes), which are sheet-like structures made from layered ceramics. They can include a range of different composites and functional groups. Lutkenhaus is investigating how chemical structure and molecular packing influence the electronic properties of these materials. She has shown that a MXene – polyelectrolyte device can be used to sense humidity and pressure, as water facilitates the relaxation of charged molecular assemblies by reducing Coulombic attraction.

Awards and honours

Her awards and honours include;

• 2011 National Science Foundation CAREER Award
• 2012 Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station Young Faculty
• 2013 Air Force Research Laboratory Young Investigator Prize
• 2014 Kaneka Corporation Faculty Scholarship
• 2014 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award
• 2016 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Van Ness Lectureship
• 2018 American Chemical Society WCC Rising Star Award
• 2018 University of Notre Dame Thiele Lectureship
• 2018 Texas A&M University Presidential Impact Fellow
• 2019 Japanese-American-German Frontiers of Science Kavli Foundation Fellow
• 2019 World Economic Forum Young Scientist

Publications

Her publications include;

• Lutkenhaus, Jodie L.; Hammonnd, Paula (2007). "Electrochemically enabled polyelectrolyte multilayer devices: from fuel cells to sensors". Soft Matter. 3 (7): 804. Bibcode:2007SMat....3..804L. doi:10.1039/B701203A.
• Lutkenhaus, Jodie L.; Hammonnd, Paula (2005). "Elastomeric Flexible Free-Standing Hydrogen-Bonded Nanoscale Assemblies". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 127 (49): 17228–17234. doi:10.1021/ja053472s. PMID 16332070.
• Mike, Jared F.; Lutkenhaus, Jodie L. (2013). "Recent advances in conjugated polymer energy storage". Journal of Polymer Science Part B: Polymer Physics. 51 (7): 468–480. Bibcode:2013JPoSB..51..468M. doi:10.1002/polb.23256.

She serves on the editorial board of ACS Macro Letters, Macromolecules and Scientific Reports.

Lutkenhaus is married to chemical engineer Ben Wilhite and they have two sons. Her older sister, Jessica Winter, is also a scientist.