Any good cook will tell you that you need to get the oven temperature right, to bake a perfect cake. Emily Ayshford, writing for SLAC-Stanford Battery Center in Tech Explore, reveals that the same applies when baking perfect lithium-ion cathodes.
This logic could be the key to preventing these cathodes cracking, after numerous charge-discharge cycles, and then failing prematurely. But will this bright idea come to market, and benefit you and we, the consumers?
Baking More Robust Lithium-Ion Cathodes
A SLAC-Stanford team applied their minds to nickel-rich, layered-oxide cathodes, popular in lithium-ion storage batteries. These are increasingly finding their way into data centers, and energy storage for utility grids.
The researchers formulated a gentler way for baking perfect lithium-ion cathodes.They began at a lower temperature than usual, and then gradually cranked up the heat. This innovation created a more uniform cathode at the nano-scale level, and it proved more robust too.
“These structures don’t crack and degrade as quickly as current batteries,” Emily Ayshford explains in her article in Tech Explore. The gentler initial baking produced a more robust product, that still held 93% of original capacity after 500 charge-recharge cycles.
A Perfect Way to Reduce Manufacturing Steps
“This is on par with the best energy retention metrics that we can find from similar batteries,” the director of SLAC-Stanford Battery Center observes. “Our team has found a way to avoid extra manufacturing steps and higher costs, but still get longer-lasting batteries.”
The author of the research paper that we link to below, remarks how the simplest ideas are often the most powerful. In this instance, his team were able to significantly improve battery stability without having to alter chemistry.
This is in stark contrast to the traditional view in chemistry, he continues. That view is you need to find an expensive way to work around a problem. In this instance a simple solution baked perfect lithium-ion cathodes without all that fuss and bother!
More Information
Cathode Redesign For Lithium-Ion
Cathode Deformation From Internal Strain
Preview Image: A Simpler Approach Worked
