Telephones, electric cars, space stations — all these devices need high-quality, powerful and
How will the battery of the future work?
An international team of scientists led by Darren Hahn and with input from LG engineers has developed a high-performance solid-state battery with a pure silicon anode.It has been called the battery of the future because it is superior in its propertiesAll analogues.
To create such a battery, the authorscombined two approaches to the production of batteries for electric cars, so the battery has a solid-state electrolyte and a silicon anode. The resulting battery has been tested by an international team and confirmed to be safe.
It can also be used not only in electric cars, but also in power grids.
Why are scientists constantly developing new types of batteries? What's wrong with the ones we use today?
Most often, we use lithium-ion batteries, they can be found everywhere: in phones, laptops, cameras.Such batteries are far from ideal: they can store energy for a long time and in large quantities, but they wear out quickly, and are also demanding on the temperature during use and cannot withstandThe latter affects the operation, for example, in electric cars.
The problem is that the crystal structurelithium-ion batteries are changed with each charge-discharge cycle. This means that the arrangement of atoms, which initially provided the required performance, becomes different.
Corrosion also occurs in the battery.Each electrode is connected to a current collector, usually a metal such as copper for the anode and aluminum for the cathode. If this connecting element begins to deteriorate and collapse, then the surface of the current collector will also deform. Therefore, if the metal is corroded, it cannot move electrons efficiently.
Another problem with modern batteries is the material from which they are made.Most use cobalt – 60% of the world's cobalt supply goesfrom Congo, so the dependence of the market is extremely high and due to problems with imports, they canglobal production suffers.
If lithium-ion batteries are not performing well, will the latest silicon anode batteries replace them?
Yes, but it's not that simple.Any technology has its drawbacks. Today, silicon anode batteries are used, for example, in Tesla. According to Elon Musk, silicon in electric car batteries helps to increase the range by 6%. Also, such batteries have a relatively higher specific capacity - it is about 3 600 mA * h / g.
But there are also problems: for example, this type of anode is unstable, so it canIf it comes into contact with a liquid electrolyte, silicon does a poor job of storing energy.In this case, the electric motor loses its power.If its percentage is small, then the growth will also beperformance remains minimal.
What other batteries may appear in our devices in the future?
- Lithium carbon battery
Mahle engineers together withbattery manufacturer Allotrope Energy has created a new architecture for lithium-carbon batteries based on supercapacitors. The new battery is made from a high speed anode combined with a cathode. Both parts are separated by an organic electrolyte. It can quickly charge supercapacitors and store energy at a high density. The developers managed to charge an electric moped with it in 90 seconds.
- Lithium Sulfur Battery with Sugar
The authors of another scientific work created lithium-sulfurbattery and used sugar to make it more stable. Some sugar-based substances can prevent degradation in geological sediments and also maintain strong bonds between sulfides. As a result, the battery with sugar showed a performance of about 700 mAh / g and worked over 1,000 cycles.
- Alkali Metal Chlorine Battery
Researchers at Stanford Universitydeveloped an alkali metal chlorine battery: it is based on the reverse chemical conversion of sodium chloride (Na / Cl2) or lithium chloride (Li / Cl2) to chlorine. The resulting cell showed a rather high discharge capacity - 2 800 mA * h / g of the cathode. But after the first cycle of use, the capacity has halved. Despite this, the battery performed well.
The batteries of the future will be made of common and easily recyclable materials, and will also begin tostore energy with high density and almost no corrosion.So far, engineers and physicists have not been able to create the perfect formula for the battery, but the need for efficient energy storage continuesgrow, so we will see many more unusual solutions in this direction.
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