Batteries are elegantly simple devices, although making perfect batteries is an endless challenge. They comprise three basic elements, namely anodes, cathodes, and electrolyte separating them. The cathode is the store of the positive ions. Therefore the ongoing cathode search continues for a material capable of endlessly sustaining the process.
This Ongoing Cathode Search Has a Greener Goal
The New Scientist waxes lyrical as it describes the cathode’s job. When we connect a battery to a live device, positively charged ions flow into that electrode from the anode. Electrons flow through the external circuit simultaneously. How simple, how elegant and how mysterious this is.
The ions and the electricity flow in the opposite direction when we recharge the battery. After the cathode releases the ions the battery is ready for use again. However one problem still remains because some ions remain trapped in the cathode. This is how battery capacity progressively degrades, and why the ongoing cathode search continues.
However, the New Scientist Suggests a Leap Forward is Coming
Longer-lasting batteries are a necessary condition for electric vehicle take-up, and cost-effective energy storage. The New Scientist has been in dialogue with Johnson Matthey that produces catalytic converters for a third of all cars
Joanna Clark, their head of product development compares storing lithium ions in cathodes to building towers with Jenga bricks. “Because every time you take a lithium ion out, it’s like taking one brick out of the tower,” she explains. “You can only take so many out before the structure collapses.” Thus the solution to the ongoing cathode search therefore includes “taming the cathode structure”.
Joanna Clark and her team are exploring ways to stabilize the physical and chemical structures of cathodes. Their success may be critical to battery capacity and hence we report their progress with interest.
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