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Efficient lithium anode battery

10.08.2014

Researchers at Stanford University in the US have been able to create an efficient and reliable lithium anode battery, while solving problems that no one has been able to solve for decades. The new development will allow in the future to create lighter, more compact and powerful batteries for smartphones, laptops, and electric vehicles.

A typical battery design includes three main elements: anode (positive electrode), electrolyte, and cathode (negative electrode). Today, the most widely used lithium-ion batteries, in which the lithium ion acts as a charge carrier. The anode is usually made of graphite. While graphite is the most popular anode material, it's far from the most efficient, says Yi Cui, Stanford University materials scientist and project leader. Lithium is more efficient.

“Of all the materials that can be used to produce anodes, lithium has the greatest potential,” explains the scientist. “It has a light weight and the highest energy density. With this material, you can get more power per unit weight and volume. lighter, smaller and more powerful batteries." Cui also says that, according to his assumptions, a lithium anode can theoretically increase the capacity of a battery by 3-4 times.

The problem lies in the fact that, first of all, lithium quickly enters into a chemical reaction with the electrolyte, and, in addition, it greatly increases in size when lithium ions are deposited on the lithium anode, which causes battery degradation.

According to the project leader, many scientists struggled for decades to solve these problems, which his team finally managed to solve by applying one additional element - a kind of protective casing that covers the anode, and which is a grid of carbon domes 20 nm thick. Such a grid prevents lithium from reacting with the electrolyte and is flexible enough to stretch as the anode expands without breaking.

Typically, a battery can be mass-produced if its Coulomb efficiency (the relative amount of lithium stored at the anode after a charge-discharge cycle) reaches 99,9% or more, without falling below this value for a long time.

So far, lithium anode batteries, created in laboratories, showed a Coulomb efficiency of about 96%. And after only 100 charge-discharge cycles, it fell below 50%. Scientists from Stanford University managed to achieve a value of 99%, which remained so even after 150 cycles.

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