Legacy lithium battery technology using liquid electrolytes is holding back the roll-out of electric vehicles. That’s because they are unable to deliver adequate driving ranges before they need recharging. However, silicon anodes could be part of the solution if we could control their expansion. Now Japanese scientists are proposing a new method for spray painting silicon anodes.
An Atomization Method for Spray Painting Silicon Anodes
We had to Google the process but the concept is actually quite simple. Spray deposition is a relatively recent development for producing high density, bulk metal shapes. First, a gas atomizes a molten metal stream. Then this spray is applied to a suitable substrate.
Researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Materials Science (NIMS) have been investigating this technology. They have found a way to use it to fabricate lithium-coated anodes. This produces solid state battery performance as good as film electrodes by the thermal evaporation method. This latter process coats a substrate with lithium fluoride and then evaporates the moisture using heat.
An Animation of the Solid State Battery Cycle
Exciting Potential for This Development
Narumi Ohta, senior researcher at NIMS says this discovery makes high volume, low cost anodes for EV’s possible. And moreover this makes all-solid-state lithium batteries practical too, he explains in a paper in ACS Applied Energy Materials.
Material scientists have been researching solid state batteries for some time. That’s because they could eliminate toxic substances according to Design News. These are difficult to dispose of, and are the energy source for lithium battery fires. However, spray painting silicon anodes using the NIMS method converts the lithium collector into a continuous film against a layer of solid electrolyte separator.
The NIMS scientists used commercial silicon nanoparticles in their experiment. Therefore, this opens up the possibility of less expensive, solid state electric vehicle batteries in future.
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Preview Image: Silicon Anode After Charging
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