[…] “Although there have been previous sodium, solid-state, and anode-free batteries, no one has been able to successfully combine these three ideas until now,” said UC San Diego PhD candidate Grayson Deysher, first author of a new paper outlining the team’s work.
The paper, published today in Nature Energy, demonstrates a new sodium battery architecture with stable cycling for several hundred cycles. By removing the anode and using inexpensive, abundant sodium instead of lithium, this new form of battery will be more affordable and environmentally friendly to produce. Through its innovative solid-state design, the battery also will be safe and powerful.
[…]
“In any anode-free battery there needs to be good contact between the electrolyte and the current collector,” Deysher said. “This is typically very easy when using a liquid electrolyte, as the liquid can flow everywhere and wet every surface. A solid electrolyte cannot do this.”
However, those liquid electrolytes create a buildup called solid electrolyte interphase while steadily consuming the active materials, reducing the battery’s usefulness over time.
A solid that flows
The team took a novel, innovative approach to this problem. Rather than using an electrolyte that surrounds the current collector, they created a current collector that surrounds the electrolyte.
They created their current collector out of aluminum powder, a solid that can flow like a liquid.
During battery assembly the powder was densified under high pressure to form a solid current collector while maintaining a liquid-like contact with the electrolyte, enabling the low-cost and high-efficiency cycling that can push this game-changing technology forward.
[…]
Story Source:
Materials provided by University of Chicago. Original written by Paul Dailing. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
- Grayson Deysher, Jin An Sam Oh, Yu-Ting Chen, Baharak Sayahpour, So-Yeon Ham, Diyi Cheng, Phillip Ridley, Ashley Cronk, Sharon Wan-Hsuan Lin, Kun Qian, Long Hoang Bao Nguyen, Jihyun Jang, Ying Shirley Meng. Design principles for enabling an anode-free sodium all-solid-state battery. Nature Energy, 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41560-024-01569-9
Source: A breakthrough in inexpensive, clean, fast-charging batteries | ScienceDaily
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