AI-guided discovery of next-generation energy-storage materials — ion-conducting peptide electrolytes (DMREF) (NSF AI grant $1.5M)

The NSF awarded about $1,500,000 to AI-guided discovery of ion-conducting peptide electrolytes (NSF Award 2522611; program: DMREF / Biomaterials; Illinois).

1Safe, thermally stable ion-conducting materials

Per the abstract (non-technical), energy-storage technologies like batteries critically require safe and thermally stable ion-conducting materials. Lithium-ion batteries are pervasive, but safety concerns have prompted new solid-state ion conductors. To date, nearly all solid polymer ion conductors are synthetic materials lacking precisely defined structures.

In contrast, biological macromolecules such as peptides have precisely defined sequences, allowing control over 3D molecular structure, such as helical elements.

2The role of the peptide helix

The project aims to understand the role of peptide helices in enhanced ion conduction, focusing on (1) arranging ion-conducting groups in controlled ways and (2) a macrodipole along the backbone that grows with helix length. This will enable a new class of helical peptide ion conductors for enhanced energy storage.

A wide range of peptide chemistries will be designed and synthesized using an AI-guided discovery approach to understand how chemistry, sequence, helical character, and arrangement of ion-conducting groups affect performance — a key outcome being to understand how peptide molecular structure affects ion transport for next-generation energy-storage materials.

3Within a state, the institutions scatter too

The 120 NSF AI-related awards this site holds as of 2026-09-01 spread across 37 states, but only 17 of those states have more than one institution receiving an award. The other 20 have exactly one.

Read by state the distribution looks wide, yet rather more than half of it rests on a single institution. A map coloured by state says that AI research exists there, not how deep it runs. Describing the spread means keeping the count of states and the count of institutions apart.