We use cookies to enhance your experience. By continuing to browse this site you agree to our use of cookies. More info.

The key to producing better rechargeable lithium batteries could be a little brushing. Chemistry professor James Tour’s lab at Rice University developed a method for fine-tuning the surface of battery anodes by merely brushing particles into them.

The powder forms a thin, lithiated coating on the anode after adhering to it, successfully preventing the growth of potentially harmful dendrites.

The ability to tune lithium metal foil's surface energy without using hazardous solvents was demonstrated by a powder of phosphorus and sulfur crushed into its surface.

After 340 charge-discharge cycles, anodes with these modifications and lithium-iron-phosphate-oxide cathodes in test cells demonstrated 70% greater capacity retention than commercial batteries.

The research is published in Advanced Materials.

This would simplify the manufacture of high-capacity batteries while greatly improving them. Sanding these powdered solids into a lithium metal anode dramatically reduces dendrite formation that can short circuit a battery, as well as the accelerated consumption of the materials.

James Tour, Professor, Materials Science and Nanoengineering, Rice University

Weiyin Chen, the lead author and a Rice graduate student, worked hard in the lab with his colleagues to test various powder possibilities on their electrodes. To develop the fine film that reacts with the lithium metal and creates a solid passivation layer, they first dusted on powder to give the surface texture.

Chen and co-author Rodrigo Salvatierra, a former postdoctoral researcher who is currently an academic visitor in the Tour lab, developed test batteries and discovered the treated anodes retained ultralow polarization, another negative trait for lithium-ion batteries, for more than 4,000 hours, or about eight times longer than bare lithium anodes.

According to Tour, the powders successfully adjust the electrodes’ surface energies, resulting in a more consistent behavior throughout the material.

Tour added, “This provides a metal composite surface that prevents the loss of lithium metal from the anode, a common problem in lithium metal batteries. Lithium metal batteries far exceed the capacity of traditional lithium-ion batteries, but the lithium metal is often difficult to repeatedly recharge.”

Study lead author Chen stated, “The powder at the lithium metal surface produces an artificial passivation layer that improves the stability throughout the charge-discharge cycles. Using this brush-on method, the metal surface is stabilized so that it can be safely recharged.”

The researchers also pulverized powder into a sodium electrode and found the approach significantly stabilized its voltage overpotential, demonstrating the method could have broader utility.

The findings are consistent with the previous finding of Tour and mechanical engineer C. Fred Higgs III of Rice that sanding particular particles into surfaces can make them superhydrophobic or extremely resistant to water.

Rice alumni John Li and Duy Luong, graduate students Jacob Beckham, Nghi La, and Jianan Xu, as well as academic visitor Victor Li, are co-authors of the study. Tour is a professor of computer science, materials science, and nanoengineering at Rice and holds the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry.

The study was funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-19-1-0296).

Chen, W., et al. (2022) Brushed Metals for Rechargeable Metal Batteries. Advanced Materials. doi:10.1002/adma.202202668.

Source: https://www.rice.edu/

Do you have a review, update or anything you would like to add to this news story?

At the Advanced Materials Show 2022, AZoM caught up with the CEO of Cambridge Smart Plastics, Andrew Terentjev. In this interview, we discuss the company's novel technologies and how they could revolutionize how we think about plastics.

At the Advanced Materials Show in June 2022, AZoM spoke with Ben Melrose from International Syalons about the advanced materials market, Industry 4.0, and efforts to move toward net-zero.

At the Advanced Materials Show, AZoM spoke with Vig Sherrill from General Graphene about the future of graphene and how their novel production technique will lower costs to open up a whole new world of applications in the future.

This product profile describes the Flex Raman Catalog.

This is the full list of rotary evaporators offered by IKA Werke.

This product from Alicona features Cobots, which consist of a collaborative 6-axis robot and optical 3D measuring sensors to provide user-friendly measurement automation.

This article provides an end-of-life assessment of lithium-ion batteries, focusing on the recycling of an ever-growing amount of spent Li-Ion batteries in order to work toward a sustainable and circular approach to battery use and reuse.

Corrosion is the degradation of an alloy caused by its exposure to the environment. Corrosion deterioration of metallic alloys exposed to the atmosphere or other adverse conditions is prevented using a variety of techniques.

Due to the ever-increasing demand for energy, the demand for nuclear fuel has also increased, which has further created a significant increase in the requirement for post-irradiation examination (PIE) techniques.

AZoM.com - An AZoNetwork Site

Owned and operated by AZoNetwork, © 2000-2022