Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering
Butala Research Group
Led by Megan Butala · Materials Science and Engineering
What we study
The Butala Research Group studies disordered rocksalt oxides (DRXs) for sustainable battery technologies. They analyze atomic structure and composition to improve energy storage performance.
What working here is like
- Wet lab
- No organisms (data only)
- Coding helps
- Projects
- 2
- Papers
- 5
Current projects
Disordered Rocksalt Oxides (DRXs)
Researching DRXs to develop sustainable battery alternatives using abundant elements like manganese and iron.
Electrochemical Behavior of V2‑xMoO8 for Next‑Generation Lithium‑Ion Batteries
The lab creates and tests a new battery material, V2MoO8, to understand how its structure affects performance. The student synthesized phase‑pure material, confirmed its composition with X‑ray and neutron diffraction, measured its charge‑discharge behavior, and examined its microstructure with electron microscopy and ICP‑MS.
From the Spring 2025 UF Undergraduate Research Symposium · abstract book, p. 530
Summaries are written by AI in plain language from public symposium abstracts and may be imperfect.
Recent papers, explained
- Esterification synthesis of iron oxide nanoparticle tracers for magnetic particle imaging (MPI)
2026 · Nanoscale
Creates tiny iron oxide particles for medical imaging using a chemical reaction.
- Predicting Short-Range Order in Disordered Rocksalt Li-Oxide Cathode Materials with Density Functional Theory and Crystal Graph Neural Networks
2026 · ACS Applied Energy Materials
Uses computer models and machine learning to study how lithium ions arrange in battery materials.
Show 3 more papersShow fewer
- Polymers of Intrinsic Microporosity as Organic Cathodes for Fast‐Charging Lithium‐Ion Batteries
2026 · Small Science
Tests whether porous polymers can improve fast-charging lithium-ion batteries by comparing different structures.
- Carbon doping in GeTe drives differences in local structure and properties
2026 · Journal of Materials Chemistry C
Shows how carbon changes the structure of a phase-change material, affecting its properties.
- Chemical Characteristics Driving Formability in Li-Excess Disordered Rocksalt Cathodes
2026 · Chemistry of Materials
Studies how different chemical elements affect battery material flexibility.
Plain-language summaries are AI-written and reviewed by us; check the paper for details.
How to reach out
Megan Butala hasn't set up this page yet. Their UF Scholars profile lists their publications.