materialsscienceandengineering: Increasing conductivity in...

materialsscienceandengineering:

Increasing conductivity in new battery materials

The high energy density of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries make them a popular energy storage technology, especially in mobile applications such as personal electronics and electric cars. However, the materials currently used in Li-ion batteries are expensive, while many of them, like lithium cobalt oxide, are also difficult to handle and dispose of. What is more, batteries using these materials have relatively short lifetimes.

These shortcomings have led scientists to develop novel materials for next generation Li-ion batteries: two promising electrode materials are lithium titanate and lithium iron phosphate. The materials are readily available, safe to use, and easy to dispose of or recycle. Most importantly, batteries manufactured using these materials have significantly longer cycle and calendar lifetimes compared to current battery technologies. However, these new materials are currently hampered by their low electrical conductivity.

Scientists at the University of Eastern Finland (UEF) in Kuopio have now come up with a potential solution to this low conductivity problem, which is reported in a paper in the Journal of Alloys and Compounds.

“The electric conductivity problem can be solved by producing nanosized, high surface area crystalline materials, or by modifying the material composition with highly conductive dopants, ” explains Tommi Karhunen, a researcher in the UEF Fine Particle and Aerosol Technology Laboratory. “We have succeeded in doing both for lithium titanate in a simple, one-step gas phase process developed here at the UEF Fine Particle and Aerosol Technology Laboratory.”

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Important research.

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materialsscienceandengineering: Promising new cathode...

materialsscienceandengineering:

Promising new cathode material to enhance battery life

Nowadays Li-ion batteries power a wide range of electronic devices: mobile phones, tablets, laptops. They became popular in 90s and subsequently ousted widespread nickel-metal hydride batteries.

However, Li-ion batteries suffer a number of disadvantages. For example, their capacity may drop when temperature falls below zero. The price is also inhibitory due to the use of expensive lithium-containing materials—for example, Li-ion batteries are responsible for about half of the cost of the electric Tesla Model S vehicle. However, Li-ion batteries are compact, easy to use and high capacity, offering long performance from relatively small batteries.

One limiting factor of Li-ion batteries is the cathode, as capacity limits for most cathode materials have been reached. Hence, scientists and engineers are actively searching for new cathode materials capable of recharging completely within minutes, operating under high current densities, and storing more energy.

One of the most promising candidates for next-generation cathode materials is fluoride-phosphates of transition metals.

The work, directed by Prof. Evgeny Antipov, was conducted by a team of MSU research scientists together with their Russian and Belgian colleagues. It was devoted to the creation of a new, high-power cathode material based on a fluoride-phosphate of vanadium and potassium for Li-ion batteries. The results were published in Chemistry of Materials.

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Yay, battery chemistry!

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materialsscienceandengineering: New battery made of molten...

materialsscienceandengineering:

New battery made of molten metals may offer low-cost, long-lasting storage for the grid

A novel rechargeable battery developed at MIT could one day play a critical role in the massive expansion of solar generation needed to mitigate climate change by midcentury. Designed to store energy on the electric grid, the high-capacity battery consists of molten metals that naturally separate to form two electrodes in layers on either side of the molten salt electrolyte between them. Tests with cells made of low-cost, Earth-abundant materials confirm that the liquid battery operates efficiently without losing significant capacity or mechanically degrading—common problems in today’s batteries with solid electrodes. The MIT researchers have already demonstrated a simple, low-cost process for manufacturing prototypes of their battery, and future plans call for field tests on small-scale power grids that include intermittent generating sources such as solar and wind.                                

The ability to store large amounts of electricity and deliver it later when it’s needed will be critical if intermittent renewable energy sources such as solar and wind are to be deployed at scales that help curtail climate change in the coming decades. Such large-scale storage would also make today’s power grid more resilient and efficient, allowing operators to deliver quick supplies during outages and to meet temporary demand peaks without maintaining extra generating capacity that’s expensive and rarely used.

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This would be cool

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Scientists see the light on microsupercapacitors.

technology-org:

Rice University researchers who pioneered the development of laser-induced graphene have configured their discovery into flexible, solid-state microsupercapacitors that rival the best available for energy storage and delivery. Rice University scientists are making small, flexible…

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If supercapacitors can be shrunk, then synthetic batteries can be a thing, and that’s huge.

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ucresearch: Batteries can get a boost with some fungus...

The Background Data and Battery Usage of Facebook’s iOS App

The Background Data and Battery Usage of Facebook’s iOS App:

Facebook hates you. By the way.

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sciencesoup: Radioactive Power: The Nuclear Battery If you’re...

sciencesoup:

Radioactive Power: The Nuclear Battery

If you’re fed up with your phone battery not lasting through the day, there may be a solution in the future: nuclear batteries. These don’t derive their energy from chemical reactions like ordinary batteries; instead, nuclear batteries harness the energy created in radioactive decay.

Before you get freaked out about having a nuclear meltdown in your phone, nuclear batteries don’t actually contain tiny fission reactors. They don’t utilise chain reactions, and they’re actually much more akin to solar cells, but instead of generating electricity from photons, they generate electricity from high-energy electrons that are emitted when radioactive elements decay.

Betavoltaic batteries are one type of nuclear battery, harnessing energy from beta decay. They’re constructed almost exactly like a solar cell, with a piece of semiconductor like silicon sandwiched between two electrodes, so when radiation hits the silicon, a flow of electrons is produced. Since beta radiation can be stopped with just a thin film of aluminium (whereas gamma radiation needs a slab of lead or concrete), betavoltaic batteries are pretty safe.

They’re also not at all new: the first beta cell was demonstrated in 1913, and betavoltaic batteries have been used in the military, satellites, spacecraft and older models of pacemakers for years, because they have an extremely long life. The Curiosity Rover is powered by a nuclear battery containing plutonium-238, which will last it 14 years. Typically, though, they’re quite large because the semiconductor material is damaged by the high-energy particles, so batteries must be built large to last as long as the radioactive isotope. Their size has limited their use, but recently, researchers at the University of Missouri have been developing a nuclear battery the size of a penny that holds a million times more charge than regular batteries.

Led by Associate Professor Jae Wan Kwon, the researchers are using a liquid semiconductor—a water-based solution—instead of a solid one, which minimises the problem of semiconductor damage. Water absorbs the beta radiation from strontium-90 like a buffer, and the radiation also splits up the water molecules to produce free radicals and energy that increase the battery’s efficiency. A titanium dioxide electrode then collects the energy and converts it into electrons.

The team are working on improving the prototype by making it smaller and more efficient. For now, the price and the risk mean nuclear batteries are mainly confined to use in military and space applications, but we can all dream of a phone with a battery life of decades.

So, this is a thing, apparently… I suppose if it solves our battery life woes, all is well, right?

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Black Phosphorus Batteries

materialsscienceandengineering:

Future electronics: Black phosphorus surges ahead of graphene

Superior conductor may be mass produced for electronic and optoelectronics devices
A Korean team of scientists tune BP’s band gap to form a superior conductor, allowing for the application to be mass produced for electronic and optoelectronics devices.
The research team operating out of Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), affiliated with the Institute for Basic Science’s (IBS) Center for Artificial Low Dimensional Electronic Systems (CALDES), reported a tunable band gap in BP, effectively modifying the semiconducting material into a unique state of matter with anisotropic dispersion. This research outcome potentially allows for great flexibility in the design and optimization of electronic and optoelectronic devices like solar panels and telecommunication lasers.
To truly understand the significance of the team’s findings, it’s instrumental to understand the nature of two-dimensional (2-D) materials, and for that one must go back to 2010 when the world of 2-D materials was dominated by a simple thin sheet of carbon, a layered form of carbon atoms constructed to resemble honeycomb, called graphene. Graphene was globally heralded as a wonder-material thanks to the work of two British scientists who won the Nobel Prize for Physics for their research on it.

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Interesting. Honestly, though, whatever material or technology we use, I just want the battery breakthrough to happen soon.


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Li-ion battery boost

materialsscienceandengineering:

Aluminum “Yolk-and-Shell” Nanoparticle Boosts Capacity and Power of Lithium-ion Batteries

New research from MIT and Tsinghua University in China reveals that an aluminum “yolk-and-shell” nanoparticle could boost the capacity and power of lithium-ion batteries.
One big problem faced by electrodes in rechargeable batteries, as they go through repeated cycles of charging and discharging, is that they must expand and shrink during each cycle — sometimes doubling in volume, and then shrinking back. This can lead to repeated shedding and reformation of its “skin” layer that consumes lithium irreversibly, degrading the battery’s performance over time.
Now a team of researchers at MIT and Tsinghua University in China has found a novel way around that problem: creating an electrode made of nanoparticles with a solid shell, and a “yolk” inside that can change size again and again without affecting the shell. The innovation could drastically improve cycle life, the team says, and provide a dramatic boost in the battery’s capacity and power.
The new findings, which use aluminum as the key material for the lithium-ion battery’s negative electrode, or anode, are reported in the journal Nature Communications, in a paper by MIT professor Ju Li and six others. The use of nanoparticles with an aluminum yolk and a titanium dioxide shell has proven to be “the high-rate champion among high-capacity anodes,” the team reports.

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Is this the battery breakthrough we’ve been longing for?


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Rechargeable Battery Care as Fast As Possible

A solid video dispelling common rechargeable battery myths. Give it a watch and learn something today.