As former director of research at Hydro-Québec, he helped to make it the world’s first company to use lithium iron phosphate in cathodes, and to develop natural graphite and nanotitanate anodes.

[5] In 2014, Karim Zaghib co-founded Esstalion Technologies, a joint-venture between Sony and Hydro-Québec which aimed to research and develop large-scale energy storage systems for power grids.

[11] In the context of the New Sunshine Project, he developed vapor grown carbon fibers as a negative electrode, and identified additives and solid polymer and gel electrolytes for Li-ion batteries with DKS, Japan.

[12] At Hydro-Québec, Karim Zaghib started a collaboration with Prof. Michel Armand on new battery materials and electrolytes and with Prof. Kim Kinoshita from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to understand the oxidation and irreversible capacity loss versus the particle size of natural graphite by proposing several models to consider the role of the basal plane and edge sites.

[12] His collaboration with Prof. Armand led to the invention of the hybrid supercapacitor using LTO negative and carbon positive electrodes,[14] the carbon-coated LiFePO4 cathode which enabled the commercial lithium iron phosphate battery,[15] and the LiFSI class of ionic liquids and electrolytes.