Scientists at the Illinois Institute of Technology have developed a new design for a lithium-air battery that can store one kilowatt-hour or more per kilogram per charge. This is four times more than the lithium-ion batteries currently used in cars.
Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere: in our computers, mobile phones or electric cars. But they don’t have enough energy density to drive the engines of heavy vehicles like airplanes. Furthermore, if EV forecasts are met in the next few years, there will not be enough lithium to produce the necessary batteries. At Novaceno we have seen various designs that promise to increase battery capacity and improve safety, such as solid-state batteries. The new battery developed by researchers at the Illinois Institute combines the advantages of solid-state and lithium-air batteries, which not only increases their density, but also allows more than 1,000 charge cycles with virtually no loss of capacity. How does it work?
According to the researchers, the idea arose while trying to create a solid-state battery compatible with the cathode-anode technology the team had developed for its lithium-air batteries. Lithium-air batteries can store more power in a smaller space than lithium-ion batteries, but they tend to run out after just a few charges and require more power to charge than they generate. To avoid this, the researchers chose a mixture of polymers and ceramics, which are not entirely effective on their own, but combine to provide the high ionic conductivity of ceramics and the high stability of the polymer.
To test this idea, the team ran a series of experiments to show how this reaction occurs. The researchers observed that the new components allowed lithium dioxide, the key to battery performance, to form and break down at high speed and at room temperature. According to the researchers, this is the first time this has happened with a lithium-air battery. “We found that this solid-state electrolyte accounts for about 75 percent of the total energy density,” explained Mohammad Asadi, a professor of chemical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology and lead author of a paper detailing the findings recently published in Magazine. Science. … “This tells us that there is a lot of room for improvement, because we believe that we can reduce thickness without compromising performance, which will allow us to achieve very, very high energy density.” Less lithium, more storage
The team is also working to find materials that can replace lithium in batteries. As we said in Chapter 3 of Control Z, “EV Rush is a Trip to Nowhere,” there isn’t enough lithium on the planet to produce the number of batteries needed to transition to EVs. Lithium-air batteries have the advantage of making better use of our remaining lithium, but are still not enough to meet the huge demand, Asadi said. In addition, the researcher believes that his new battery could be made of other less scarce and cheap metals. In this sense, the researchers seek partners with companies in the battery industry to optimize the design and prepare it for production. “[La nueva] technology is a breakthrough that opens up many opportunities to bring these technologies to market,” Asadi said.
