Battery Technology

Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists seeking the source of charge loss in lithium-ion batteries demonstrated that coupling a thin-film cathode with a solid electrolyte is a rapid way to determine the root cause. In a study, researchers prepared a lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide cathode as dense, thin-films free from binders and additives. The cathode’s…

HUBER+SUHNER, a global supplier of electrical and optical connectivity solutions, has launched the RADOX HPC500; a new addition to the RADOX high-power charging portfolio. It is the world’s first cooled charging-cable system that allows continuous charging at 500 Amperes even in high-temperature environments. The HPC500 cable and connecter builds on the proven performance and design…

  Rechargeable batteries are at the heart of many new technologies involving, for example, the increased use of renewable energies. More specifically, they are employed to power electric vehicles, cell phones, and laptops. Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM) in Germany have now presented a non-contact method for…

IDTechEx estimates total demand for Li-ion batteries to have been over 200 GWh in 2019 and forecast Li-ion demand for plug-in electric cars alone to be nearly 350 GWh by 2025, but can supply meet this demand? Automotive manufacturers the world over are now pledging to electrify their fleets. However, many traditional automotive manufacturers were…

New battery technology involving microwaves may provide an avenue for renewable energy conversion and storage. Purdue University researchers created a technique to turn waste polyethylene terephthalate, one of the most recyclable polymers, into components of batteries. “We use an ultrafast microwave irradiation process to turn PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, flakes into disodium terephthalate, and use…

By Glenn Roberts Jr. From next-gen smartphones to longer-range electric cars and an improved power grid, better batteries are driving tech innovation. And to push batteries beyond their present-day performance, researchers want to see “under the hood” to learn how the individual ingredients of battery materials behave beneath the surface. This could ultimately lead to…

By Christina Nunez Many processes that generate electricity also produce heat, a potent energy resource that often goes untapped everywhere from factories to vehicles to power plants. An innovative system currently being developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory can quickly store heat and release it for use when needed, surpassing…

A team of scientists led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has captured in real time how lithium ions move in lithium titanate (LTO), a fast-charging battery electrode material made of lithium, titanium and oxygen. They discovered that distorted arrangements of lithium and surrounding atoms in…

A team of scientists led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has captured in real time how lithium ions move in lithium titanate (LTO), a fast-charging battery electrode material made of lithium, titanium, and oxygen. They discovered that distorted arrangements of lithium and surrounding atoms in…

An international research team has pioneered and about to patent a new filtration technique that could one day slash lithium extraction times and change the way the future is powered. The world-first study, published today in the prestigious international journal Nature Materials, presents findings that demonstrate the way in which Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) channels can…

By: Tom Rickey, PNNL The first hours of a lithium-ion battery’s life largely determine just how well it will perform. In those moments, a set of molecules self-assembles into a structure inside the battery that will affect the battery for years to come. This component, known as the solid-electrolyte interphase or SEI, has the crucial…

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers in the College of Engineering Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering will receive a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop next-generation rechargeable batteries. By redesigning the materials inside lithium-ion batteries, which power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles, the researchers believe they can significantly extend battery life,…

Energy storage startup SPARKZ has exclusively licensed five battery technologies from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory designed to eliminate cobalt metal in lithium-ion batteries. The advancement is aimed at accelerating the production of electric vehicles and energy storage solutions for the power grid. The licensed technologies include cathode materials, a novel electrolyte…

Engineers strive to design smartphones with longer-lasting batteries, electric vehicles that can drive for hundreds of miles on a single charge, and a reliable power grid that can store renewable energy for future use. Each of these technologies is within reach — that is, if scientists can build better cathode materials. To date, the typical…

Yotta, the developer of safe panel-level energy storage, announced today that it has teamed up with California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH), to install Yotta’s proprietary technology for energy storage on campus. The project has been designed to test the grid-interactive power controls of Yotta’s SolarLEAF and to ensure that critical tasks are successfully executed.…

A new paper-thin radio-frequency detector designed to work inside a lithium-ion battery provides information about the battery’s health while charging and discharging. “It could enable researchers to check a battery’s function and capacity after years of storage without destroying it,” said Eric Sorte, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories. The work, funded by Sandia’s Laboratory…

Concerns about the scarcity of lithium and other materials necessary in the now ubiquitous lithium-ion batteries have recently driven many researchers to look for alternatives, such as sodium and potassium. Professor Shinichi Komaba from Tokyo University of Science, Japan, and his team have worked for over a decade on this topic. In his latest review…

Scientists have uncovered a root cause of the growth of needle-like structures—known as dendrites and whiskers—that plague lithium batteries, sometimes causing a short circuit, failure, or even a fire. The team, led by Chongmin Wang at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, has shown that the presence of certain compounds in the electrolyte—the…

  Lithium ion is probably the most advanced technology available for the packs of rechargeable batteries you’ll buy this holiday season. The batteries also power the vast majority of consumer devices, electric vehicles, and grid storage systems. Despite their ubiquity, lithium-ion batteries have disadvantages. Metals used in the batteries are becoming expensive and one crucial…

In the 1970s, M. Stanley Whittingham proposed an initial concept of lithium-ion batteries that use LixTiS2 as cathode and lithium metal as anode materials, where intercalation effects were demonstrated with a small lattice expansion [1]. In 1979-1980, John B. Goodenough discovered that the transition metal LixCoO2 at the cathode produces a potential as high as…

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Mellon College of Science and College of Engineering have developed a semiliquid lithium metal-based anode that represents a new paradigm in battery design. Lithium batteries made using this new electrode type could have a higher capacity and be much safer than typical lithium metal-based batteries that use lithium foil as…

Electric cars rely on the same lithium-ion battery technology that’s in smartphones, laptops and virtually everything electronic. But the technology has been extremely slow to improve. While electric cars can more than handle the average American’s daily commute, the average gas-powered car can still go farther on a full tank of gas, charging stations are…

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have designed a new, organic cathode material for lithium batteries. With sulfur at its core, the material is more energy-dense, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly than traditional cathode materials in lithium batteries. The research was published in Advanced Energy Materials on April 10, 2019. Optimizing…

Life today depends heavily on electricity. However, the unrelenting demand for electricity calls for increasingly greener and “portable” sources of energy. Although windmills and solar panels are promising alternatives, the fluctuation in output levels depending on external factors renders them as unreliable. Thus, from the viewpoint of resource allocation and economics, high-energy density secondary batteries…