Scientists have found a way to triple the life of lithium metal batteries

Lithium metal batteries are one of the most promising new type of batteries. After all, their potential capacity is 10 times greater than similar lithium-ion batteries.

But the increased tendency to form dendrites and corrosive destruction of metallic lithium did not allow new batteries to fully conquer the market.

But a research team at Rice University seems to have found a solution to this problem.

The scientific group proposed a rather elegant solution: using the most common tape and modern laser technology, they managed to develop a completely new material for the electrode.

Lithium metal battery and its main disadvantages

In the design of a lithium-metal battery, the anode (which in other batteries is made of graphite) is made of pure metal lithium.

And since this material has an increased specific energy, metal lithium is able to increase the battery capacity by 10 times, as well as speed up the charging process many times over.

Here are just a number of significant disadvantages, and the main one is an increased tendency to form so-called dendrites.

Metallic build-up that will significantly reduce the actual capacity of the battery and may even cause the battery to catch fire due to an internal short circuit.

What scientists have proposed

In order to minimize the rate of dendrite formation, the following solution was proposed:

Take the most ordinary scotch tape, add a little graphene to it, wrap it around a copper current collector (which is part of the lithium anode) and process it with specially tuned lasers.

At the same time, the workpiece was heated to an extreme temperature of 2026 degrees Celsius, which changed the original properties of the workpiece.

This treatment transformed the copper ribbon into a porous structure, which began to consist mainly of silicon and oxygen with small impurities of graphene.

Experiments with the material thus obtained have shown that it can act as a protective shell for current collector, while actively absorbing and emitting metallic lithium and at the same time not provoking the formation unwanted dendrites.

In addition, strong oxidation of lithium metal was another serious problem. This significantly reduced the efficiency and service life of lithium metal batteries. And to reduce this effect, the anode had to be increased.

The coating obtained during the experiment solved this problem as well. After all, the tests carried out showed that the service life of the tested prototypes increased at least three times, compared to similar batteries without a special coating.

At the same time, new batteries retain at least 70% of their original capacity after 60 charge-discharge cycles, which is also considered an excellent result.

Scientists have high hopes for future development and continue to work to improve the performance of lithium metal batteries.

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