Materials scientists have sussed out the physical phenomenon underlying the promising electrical properties of a class of materials called superionic crystals. A better understanding of such materials could lead to safer and more efficient rechargeable batteries than the current standard-bearer of lithium ion.
Becoming a popular topic of study only within the past five years, superionic crystals are a cross between a liquid and a solid. While some of their molecular components retain a rigid crystalline structure, others become liquid-like above a certain temperature, and are able to flow through the solid scaffold.
In a new study, scientists from Duke University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) probed one such superionic crystal containing copper, chromium and selenium (CuCrSe2) with neutrons and X-rays to determine how the material’s copper ions achieve their liquid-like properties. The results appear online on Oct. 8 in the journal Nature Physics.
“When CuCrSe2 is heated above 190 degrees Fahrenheit, its copper ions fly around inside the layers of chromium and selenium about as fast as liquid water molecules move,” said Olivier Delaire, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke and senior author on the study. “And yet, it’s still a solid that you could hold in your hand. We wanted to understand the molecular physics behind this phenomenon.”
Scientists Reduce All-Solid-State Battery Resistance by Heating
All-solid-state batteries are now one step closer to becoming the powerhouse of next-generation electronics as researchers from Tokyo Tech, AIST, and Yamagata University introduce a strategy to restore their low electrical resistance. They also explore the underlying reduction mechanism, paving the way for a more fundamental understanding of the workings of all-solid-state lithium batteries.
All-solid-state lithium batteries have become the new craze in materials science and engineering as conventional lithium-ion batteries can no longer meet the standards for advanced technologies, such as electric vehicles, which demand high energy densities, fast charging, and long cycle lives. All-solid-state batteries, which use a solid electrolyte instead of a liquid electrolyte found in traditional batteries, not only meet these standards but are comparatively safer and more convenient as they have the possibility to charge in a short time.
Scientists reveal a new nanostructure that could revolutionize technology in batteries and beyond.
New research has identified a nanostructure that improves the anode in lithium-ion batteries
Instead of using graphite for the anode, the researchers turned to silicon: a material that stores more charge but is susceptible to fracturing
The team made the silicon anode by depositing silicon atoms on top of metallic nanoparticles
The resulting nanostructure formed arches, increasing the strength and structural integrity of the anode
Electrochemical tests showed the lithium-ion batteries with the improved silicon anodes had a higher charge capacity and longer lifespan
New research conducted by the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) has identified a specific building block that improves the anode in lithium-ion batteries. The unique properties of the structure, which was built using nanoparticle technology, are revealed and explained today (February 5, 2021) in Communications Materials.
A new type of battery developed by researchers at MIT could be made partly from carbon dioxide captured from power plants. Rather than attempting to convert carbon dioxide to specialized chemicals using metal catalysts, which is currently highly challenging, this battery could continuously convert carbon dioxide into a solid mineral carbonate as it discharges.
The battery is made from lithium metal, carbon, and an electrolyte that the researchers designed. While still based on early-stage research and far from commercial deployment, the new battery formulation could open up new avenues for tailoring electrochemical carbon dioxide conversion reactions, which may ultimately help reduce the emission of the greenhouse gas to the atmosphere.
Currently, power plants equipped with carbon capture systems generally use up to 30 percent of the electricity they generate just to power the capture, release, and storage of carbon dioxide. Anything that can reduce the cost of that capture process, or that can result in an end product that has value, could significantly change the economics of such systems, the researchers say.
Betar Gallant, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, said, ‘Carbon dioxide is not very reactive. Trying to find new reaction pathways is important.’Ideally, the gas would undergo reactions that produce something worthwhile, such as a useful chemical or a fuel. However, efforts at electrochemical conversion, usually conducted in water, remain hindered by high energy inputs and poor selectivity of the chemicals produced.
The team looked into whether carbon-dioxide-capture chemistry could be put to use to make carbon-dioxide-loaded electrolytes — one of the three essential parts of a battery — where the captured gas could then be used during the discharge of the battery to provide a power output.
The team developed a new approach that could potentially be used right in the power plant waste stream to make material for one of the main components of a battery. By incorporating the gas in a liquid state, however, Gallant and her co-workers found a way to achieve electrochemical carbon dioxide conversion using only a carbon electrode. The key is to preactivate the carbon dioxide by incorporating it into an amine solution.
‘What we’ve shown for the first time is that this technique activates the carbon dioxide for more facile electrochemistry,’ Gallant says. ‘These two chemistries — aqueous amines and nonaqueous battery electrolytes — are not normally used together, but we found that their combination imparts new and interesting behaviors that can increase the discharge voltage and allow for sustained conversion of carbon dioxide.’
The battery is made from lithium metal, carbon, and an electrolyte that the researchers designed. While still based on early-stage research and far from commercial deployment, the new battery formulation could open up new avenues for tailoring electrochemical carbon dioxide conversion reactions, which may ultimately help reduce the emission of the greenhouse gas to the atmosphere.
You can now 3D print lithium-ion batteries in any shape.
Lithium-ion batteries are normally either cylindrical or rectangular shaped, which forces manufacturers to dedicate a certain size and place for the battery in its design. This way of making electronic devices such as laptops and mobile phones may cause a waste of both space and options to branch out with design.
InACS Applied Energy Materials, researchers present their method of 3D printing which can create the whole structural device, including the battery and with all the electronic components – in almost any shape.
Since the polymers used for printing, like poly(lactic acid) (PLA) are not ionic conductors, the researchers infused PLA with an electrolyte solution as well as adding graphene into the anode or cathode to boost the battery’s electrical conductivity.
Showing the capacity of the printed battery, the team printed a bracelet with an integrated battery. As of now, the battery could only power the green LED for approximately 60 seconds – making the battery circa two orders of magnitude lower than already commercially available batteries. Although this makes the battery capacity too low to use at the moment, the researchers have multiple ideas to fix the low capacity such as, replacing the PLA materials with 3D printable pastes.
Novel materials can considerably improve storage capacity and cycling stability of rechargeable batteries. Among these materials are high-entropy oxides (HEO), whose stability results from a disordered distribution of the elements. With HEO, electrochemical properties can be tailored, as was found by scientists of the team of nanotechnology expert Horst Hahn at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The researchers report their findings in the journal Nature Communications.
Sustainable energy supply requires reliable storage systems. Demand for rechargeable electrochemical energy storage devices for both stationary and mobile applications has increased rapidly in the past years and is expected to continue to grow in the future. Among the most important properties of batteries are their storage capacity and their cycling stability, i.e. the number of possible charging and discharging processes without any loss of capacity. Thanks to its high stability, an entirely new class of materials called high-entropy oxides (HEO) is expected to result in major improvements. Moreover, electrochemical properties of HEO can be customized by varying their compositions. For the first time, scientists of KIT’s Institute of Nanotechnology (INT) and Karlsruhe Nano Micro Facility (KNMF), of the Helmholtz Institute Ulm (HIU) established jointly by KIT and Ulm University, and of the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras have now demonstrated the suitability of HEO as conversion materials for reversible lithium storage. Conversion batteries based on electrochemical material conversion allow for an increase of the stored amount of energy, while battery weight is reduced. The scientists used HEO to produce conversion-based electrodes that survived more than 500 charging cycles without any significant degradation of capacity.
Scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have uncovered a molecular game of musical chairs that hurts battery performance.
In an article published in Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers demonstrate how the excitation of oxygen atoms that contributes to better performance of a lithium-ion battery also triggers a process that leads to damage, explaining a phenomenon that has been a mystery to scientists.
The research pinpoints the science behind one barrier on the road to creating longer-lived, higher-capacity rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. It’s an unexpected finding about a process that takes place every day in the batteries that power cell phones, laptop computers, and electric cars.
Haste makes waste, as the saying goes. Such a maxim may be especially true of batteries, thanks to a new study that seeks to identify the reasons that cause the performance of fast charged lithium-ion batteries to degrade in electric vehicles.
In new research from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, scientists have found interesting chemical behavior of one of the battery’s two terminals as the battery is charged and discharged.
Lithium-ion batteries contain both a positively charged cathode and a negatively charged anode, which are separated by a material called an electrolyte that moves lithium ions between them. The anode in these batteries is typically made out of graphite—the same material found in many pencils. In lithium-ion batteries, however, the graphite is assembled out of small particles. Inside these particles, the lithium ions can insert themselves in a process called intercalation. When intercalation happens properly, the battery can successfully charge and discharge.
Members of the D. V. Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physic and colleagues from the Faculty of Chemistry of the Lomonosov Moscow State University have developed a new silicon- and germanium-based material that could significantly increase specific characteristics of lithium-ion batteries. The research results have been published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A.
Lithium-ion batteries are the most popular type of energy storage system for modern electronic devices. They are composed of two electrodes—the negative (anode) and positive (cathode) ones, which are placed into a hermetic enclosure. The space in between is filled with a porous separator, steeped in a lithium ion-conductive electrolyte solution. The separator prevents short circuits between the bipolar electrodes and provides electrolyte volume, necessary for ion transport. Electric current in an external circuit is generated when lithium ions extract from the anode material and move through the electrolyte with further insertion into cathode material. However, the specific capacity of a lithium-ion battery is largely defined by the number of lithium ions that can be accepted and transferred by active materials of the anode and cathode.
The scientists have developed and studied a new anode material that allows energy efficiency of Li-ion batteries to be significantly increased. The material is suitable for utilization in both bulk and thin film Li-ion batteries.
Silicon – the second most abundant element in the earth’s crust – shows great promise in Li-ion batteries, according to new research from the University of Eastern Finland. By replacing graphite anodes with silicon, it is possible to quadruple anode capacity.
In a climate-neutral society, renewable and emission-free sources of energy, such as wind and solar power, will become increasingly widespread. The supply of energy from these sources, however, is intermittent, and technological solutions are needed to safeguard the availability of energy also when it’s not sunny or windy. Furthermore, the transition to emission-free energy forms in transportation requires specific solutions for energy storage, and lithium-ion batteries are considered to have the best potential.
Researchers from the University of Eastern Finland introduced new technology to Li-ion batteries by replacing graphite used in anodes by silicon. The study analysed the suitability of electrochemically produced nanoporous silicon for Li-ion batteries. It is generally understood that in order for silicon to work in batteries, nanoparticles are required, and this brings its own challenges to the production, price and safety of the material. However, one of the main findings of the study was that particles sized between 10 and 20 micrometres and with the right porosity were in fact the most suitable ones to be used in batteries. The discovery is significant, as micrometre-sized particles are easier and safer to process than nanoparticles. This is also important from the viewpoint of battery material recyclability, among other things. The findings were published in Scientific Reports.
For electric vehicles (EVs) to become mainstream, they need cost-effective, safer, longer-lasting batteries that won’t explode during use or harm the environment. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology may have found a promising alternative to conventional lithium-ion batteries made from a common material: rubber.
Elastomers, or synthetic rubbers, are widely used in consumer products and advanced technologies such as wearable electronics and soft robotics because of their superior mechanical properties. The researchers found that the material, when formulated into a 3D structure, acted as a superhighway for fast lithium-ion transport with superior mechanical toughness, resulting in longer charging batteries that can go farther. The research, conducted in collaboration with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide, or NMC, is one of the most promising chemistries for better lithium batteries, especially for electric vehicle applications, but scientists have been struggling to get higher capacity out of them. Now researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory…
Tesla is at the forefront of industrial battery technology research.
Electric cars are accelerating commercially. General Motors has already sold 12,000 models of its Chevrolet Bolt and Daimler announced in September 2017 that it is to invest $1bn to produce electric cars in the US, with Investment bank ING, meanwhile, predicts that European cars will go fully electric by 2035.
‘Batteries are a global industry worth tens of billions of dollars, but over the next 10 to 20 years it will probably grow to many hundreds of billions per year,’ says Gregory Offer, battery researcher at Imperial College London. ‘There is an opportunity now to invest in an industry, so that when it grows exponentially you can capture value and create economic growth.’
The big opportunity for technology disruption lies in extending battery lifetime, says Offer, whose team at Imperial takes market-ready or prototype battery devices into their lab to model the physics and chemistry going on inside, and then figures out how to improve them.
Lithium batteries, the battery technology of choice, are built from layers, each connected to a current connector and theoretically generating equivalent power, which flows out through the terminals. However, improvements in design of packs can lead to better performance and slower degradation.
Lithium batteries need to be adapted for electric vehicle use.Image: Public Domain Pictures
For many electric vehicles, cooling plates are placed on each side of the battery cell, but the middle layers get hotter and fatigue faster. Offer’s group cooled the cell terminals instead, because they are connected to every layer. ‘You want the battery operating warmish, not too hot and not too cold,’ he says.
A collaboration led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has observed an unexpected phenomenon in lithium-ion batteries – the most common type of battery used to power cell phones and electric cars. As a model battery generated electric current, the scientists witnessed the concentration of lithium inside individual nanoparticles reverse at a certain point, instead of constantly increasing. This discovery, which was published on January 12 in the journal Science Advances, is a major step toward improving the battery life of consumer electronics.
“If you have a cell phone, you likely need to charge its battery every day, due to the limited capacity of the battery’s electrodes,” said Esther Takeuchi, a SUNY distinguished professor at Stony Brook University and a chief scientist in the Energy Sciences Directorate at Brookhaven Lab. “The findings in this study could help develop batteries that charge faster and last longer.”
Visualizing batteries on the nanoscale
Inside every lithium-ion battery are particles whose atoms are arranged in a lattice – a periodic structure with gaps between the atoms. When a lithium-ion battery supplies electricity, lithium ions flow into empty sites in the atomic lattice.
Yes, another gold audio fuse but this one has a pink LED and a bit more embellishment - four struts connected to two bracket rings. It does remind me of an old valve. It has very thin gold plate on the caps and central fuse - apparently it doesn’t degrade which effects sound quality in high end audio equipment. On this one I used a pink LED. The photo does make it look more purple but in reality it is more pink. I don’t like altering product photos too much.
As you can see the light is on when the post is inserted into the silver battery pack. The batteries can be replaced by screwing the top off. When I build these it’s so exciting turning it on for the first time - I was thrilled when I saw this one light up. Perfect for that theatrical costume or just that night out. It will certainly grab attention.
This is made from a gold plated fuse, used in high end stereo for superior sound quality. They have such a great look - atompunk/mid century - I didn’t want to really alter the look. The internal gold plate “S” connection has such great form I couldn’t improve on it. I’ve sold several attached horizontally on a cord for men’s jewellery. Audiophiles love them.
But I wanted to highlight it with light. On the bottom of the fuse I’ve installed an LED with a connection post running through the base cap. The light is turned on by plugging that pin into a small silver tone battery pack. It holds tight to the pin. The battery pack unscrews at the top so batteries can be replaced. The bracket holding the fuse is not fixed so you could turn it up the other way and have the battery pack on the top of the fuse. To balance the piece without the battery I created a similar post on the other end.
Why should fun jewellery, brave jewellery design using light be the domain of gaudy kitsch - plastic flashing Christmas earrings, disposable dance/rave accessories and cheap novelty toys for kids? Why can’t it be used in high quality unique design? Yes, it’s a bit mad scientist and will certainly attract attention whether the light is on or off.
