"True lithium battery" to quadruple the battery capacity of smartphones and electric cars appeared

ByIntel Free Press

A major disadvantage of high-performance, high-function smartphones is the badness of battery ownership, and further improvement in battery performance is required. It seems that the realization of a "true lithium battery" that improves the battery of such a smartphone by 4 times seems to be approaching.

Interconnected hollow carbon nanospheres for stable lithium metal anodes: Nature Nanotechnology: Nature Publishing Group
http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2014.152.html

Researchers achieve 'holy grail' of battery design: A stable diodes
http://phys.org/news/2014-07-holy-grail-battery-stable-lithium.html

Currently, "lithium batteries", which are mainstream batteries for smart phones, PCs and electric vehicles, are exactlyLithium ion (secondary) batteryIt is what is called,CathodeLithium metal oxide,anodeCarbon material is used for.

ByCarl Berkeley

It is known that metallic lithium is the most excellent material as an anode material to improve battery efficiency, and if it can be realized, the battery capacity is expected to be four times that of current lithium ion batteries. Incidentally, it is often referred to as "button battery"Lithium batteryMetallic lithium is used for the anode, but can not be chargedPrimary batterySo it is not suitable for applications such as PC and electric cars.

However, although attempts have been made to use metallic lithium for the anode in a number of studies, lithium ions diffuse to the anode during chargingpolarizationIt was difficult to realize because a capillary crack occurred in the anode and the electrolytic solution seeped and generated a large amount of heat.

Meanwhile, at the University of StanfordE · KooAssociate professor created a dome type protective film of only 20 nanometers with carbon atoms named "nanosphere" in honeycomb structure to prevent problems caused by adopting metallic lithium for the anode, A paper that realizes physical and chemical strength and solves the problem by preventing polarization, withstanding expansion of lithium during charging, etc., is referred to as a scientific journalNature NanotechnologyWe announced at.


In general, in order to be commercially available for batteries, a coulomb efficiency of 99.9% or more is required in the charge and discharge cycle, but the nanosphere protected lithium battery prepared by Dr. Ku's research team has 99% It has achieved Coulomb's efficiency and has reached commercial step one step.

As smartphones and electric cars advance further, battery capacity increase is an indispensable task and I am hoping that development of nanosphere protection technology released by Dr. Ku will progress and put into practical use.